String Theory
by Covalent Bond
Summary: In the first few days after The Sum in the Parts of the Whole, Cam has a discussion with Booth that gets him to question why Brennan turned him down. The conversation that follows changes everything he thinks he knows about his partner and himself.
1. Something is Wrong

Summary: In the first few days after The Sum in the Parts of the Whole, Cam has a discussion with Booth that gets him to question why Brennan turned him down. The conversation that follows changes everything he thinks he knows about his partner and himself.

_**~ String Theory ~**_

**Chapter 1 - Something is Wrong**

Dr. Camille Saroyan stood at the base of the forensics platform in the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal lab and acknowledged sadly that her brightest scientist had visibly grown dimmer in the last few days. Dr. Temperance Brennan looked a little pale, a little reduced, very quiet.

If there was one thing Cam prided herself on, it was her street smarts. She was one of the rare few who managed to combine the abstract experience of medical school and a career as a forensic pathologist with the concrete experience of the school of hard knocks and a former career as a NYPD street cop. She knew plenty of science, but she also knew people, even such enigmatic people as Dr. Brennan. She'd known for days that something was wrong.

Brennan was possibly the most difficult friend Cam had ever managed to add to her considerable roster. The reserved genius had found herself forced into a subordinate position under Cam unexpectedly, and the independent anthropologist did not adapt easily to Cam's demand that everything go through the boss first. Brennan's flashing leaps of insight could not easily be explained to a more concrete thinker like … well, the other 99% of humanity. So rather than explain, Brennan was in the habit of acting on impulse. The previous boss may have allowed that, but Cam put her foot down. They'd clashed, heavily. Cam had threatened to fire her and Brennan had threatened to quit. Only FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth's subtle intervention had staved off that collision and helped Cam see that she ought to try harder to understand Brennan's method, if not Brennan herself.

Cam had known Seeley Booth well over a decade, having been romantically involved with him back in college and during his earliest days in the FBI. Though they had come together and parted twice, it had been on friendly terms both times. Cam trusted Booth's judgment, so if Booth said she'd misjudged Brennan, then she ought to find out why he thought the difficult forensic anthropologist was worth fighting for. There was also the puzzling fact that every one of the scientists who worked with Temperance Brennan was fiercely loyal to her—they'd all threatened to walk out the door behind her if Dr. Brennan lost her job at the Jeffersonian. Loyalty like that demanded an explanation, and Cam determined she would find it.

What Cam had discovered was that the loyalty wasn't very hard to explain after all. It turned out the hard-headed, ridiculously awkward anthropologist had a compassionate heart, uncompromising honesty, unflagging stamina, and ferocious courage. All this after having been stepped on, hurt and abandoned by people her whole life through. Brennan took near killing blows but always managed to get back up and keep fighting for justice—not for herself, but for those who were weaker than she was. Who wouldn't admire Temperance Brennan, when they looked deep enough to see who she really was. So yes, despite herself, Camille Saroyan found herself joining the make-shift Jeffersonian family that surrounded Brennan, a family by choice rather than blood. Their rapport was strained at times, but always tinged with respect. One thing Cam could count on was that Brennan was brilliant and her intentions were always pure, even if her blunt interpersonal approach bordered on maddening most days. Despite the inauspicious beginning, they'd gradually become friendly, then friends.

Even after they'd declared a truce, to no one's surprise, it hadn't been easy figuring out how to work with Dr. Brennan. One day early on, Cam had insisted that Brennan explain why she wanted to extract the dentin from a victim's molars and run it through both DNA typing and the gas chromatograph. Keeping an eye on the lab's budget was one of Cam's responsibilities, and both tests—unnecessary when they already knew the victim's identity—were too expensive. Explain, Cam had demanded. And then Cam spent the next two hours growing increasingly glassy eyed as Dr. Temperance Brennan explained in agonizing detail all the twists, leaps, turns, backtracks, side trails, rabbit trails, meanderings, musings and hyperspace jumps it took for Brennan to notice that something was 'off' with one of the molars. Yet towards the end of Brennan's dissertation, the explanation had made sense, and Cam had finally relented (partly out of sheer exhaustion). The results had revealed the astonishing fact that the molar did not belong to the female victim, but to a man who'd grown up in the Midwest. The tooth had led straight to the killer.

Amazed, that is what Cam had felt. Just … astounded. Hours after the arrest, she went back to Brennan and asked, "How long did it take you to figure out that tooth was a clue?"

Brennan's brow took on its typical wrinkle as she searched her memory for an answer. "No more than a minute. I could tell just by looking at it that the size and coloration were inconsistent."

Cam nodded. "And how long did it take you to decide which tests to run?"

Again, the puzzled brow. "I … just knew."

"Hmm," Cam said. "But it took you two hours to explain it to me."

"Yes," Brennan confirmed. "You wanted to know why I thought those tests would be appropriate given the seeming tangent, and why the tangent was something worthy of being investigated. There was an extensive foundation of information that you needed in order to put my experience and observation into the proper context."

"So basically, it's like Stephen Hawking trying to explain String Theory to a four year old."

Standing nearby, Dr. Jack Hodgins had snorted at this.

But Brennan had brightened and even looked a little relieved. "Yes, precisely." Then, hesitating, she added, "Not that I think you're four years old, Dr. Saroyan."

Hodgins let go a full-grown snicker then ducked before the daggers from Cam's glare could hit him and draw blood.

Cam sighed, knowing when she was on the losing end of an argument. "Dr. Brennan, in the future, when I ask for an explanation and you know it will take hours to explain, just … tell me 'String Theory.' And I'll get it. Okay?"

"So, 'String Theory' is like a code word?" Brennan asked cautiously.

"Exactly. It will save us both so much time."

"Those terms are acceptable."

To Dr. Brennan's credit, she hadn't used the 'String Theory' code very often—only a handful of times in the last three and a half years. And, yesterday. Thursday.

~Q~

Something had gone wrong since Monday morning. Brennan had left with Agent Booth during the late afternoon to meet with Dr. Lance Sweets, a psychologist at the FBI. Everything was fine when Brennan left, but the following morning revealed the disturbing change. Brennan dragged herself into the lab wearing dispirit like a cloak. As for Booth, long a semi-permanent fixture at the lab, he hadn't turned up at all, and no one had seen him since.

The gossip mills were churning, the betting pool was deep enough to swim in, and Brennan's demeanor had grown increasingly listless over the next few days. Cam could see that Brennan was upset and so she'd asked if anything was wrong. The first few times, she hadn't gotten anything more informative than a curt, "I'm fine."

One thing everyone at the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab knew, was Brennan's preferred method of coping with emotional stress. She threw herself into work and became rigidly analytic. She would not admit to distress of any kind and shunned "talking about it" with almost comic distaste. Even in the best of circumstances, the only people who managed to get any emotional disclosures out of Brennan were Angela and Booth. Since Booth was missing, all evidence pointed to him being part of the problem.

Angela Montenegro, quite simply, was Brennan's best friend. The forensic artist had a knack for finding tiny little cracks in Brennan's armor, usually using a combination of psychology and stealth humor, plus a solid understanding of Brennan's history. In order for anyone to understand Brennan, they had to know her history, and that was something that Angela knew very well indeed. (Though how she had learned it was a puzzle Cam was still trying to unravel.)

Whatever had happened, however, Angela hadn't gotten far with Brennan this time. She'd tried several times to engage the reticent anthropologist in a conversation but found herself gently rebuffed at every turn.

Booth, well, he was something else.

Cam wasn't a romantic by any stretch of the imagination but, if ever she was going to believe in a concept like 'soul mates,' then Booth and Brennan were the exemplars. Special Agent Seeley Booth of the FBI worked with Brennan, taking her with him to crime scenes, into interviews, and generally included her in almost every facet of the murder investigations he was assigned by the FBI. The combination of his instincts and her intellect, his people skills and her analytic skills, proved a potent killer-catching formula. The two had a near-100% case-solving rate. He spent hours with her daily, and understood her in ways that even eluded Angela.

Street smart, intuitive, chivalrous and kind, the powerful man of action had been working with Brennan for over five years now. After a rough start, he'd taken a liking to Brennan because he found her refreshingly quirky, honest, and generous. After learning of her painful past, he'd taken to protecting her from further heartbreak. The relationship between them had grown, transforming from friendship into a love affair of epic, Shakespearean proportions. The entire Jeffersonian and half the FBI watched in rapt fascination as Booth and Brennan worked together, sparred, supported and loved each other, and yet never spoke a word about the obvious adoration they held for one another. If anyone asked—and people did, quite regularly—both partners would insist there was nothing going on between them. They weren't in love. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Oh, but there was something to see. There had been, for years. It was beautiful, the way Brennan's face lit up when Booth entered the room, or the way he seemed to grow a little taller when she laid a heartfelt compliment at his feet. If one of them was hurt or endangered, the other turned into a raging, unstoppable force of nature until all was well with the injured partner. Everyone who knew the pair was just waiting for the day when the partners finally acknowledged what everyone else could plainly see: the two completed each other and were meant to be together.

Cam would have bet the family farm on that, if she'd had a farm. Until Tuesday.

Temperance Brennan had come to work Tuesday morning looking like a shadow of herself. Agent Booth hadn't come in at all. Not Tuesday, not Wednesday, not yesterday, not today. Yesterday, Cam had decided it was time to find out what had happened.

She went to Angela first, knowing the artist would have been poking and prying all week. When Angela reported she'd been unable to get anywhere, Cam had tried a direct approach. She'd gone to Brennan's office herself and found the forensic anthropologist staring blankly at her computer's screen saver.

"Dr. Brennan, is everything okay?"

Brennan blinked, glanced up. "Yes, I'm fine. Why?"

"You seem a little down," Cam observed cautiously.

"Well, yes, I am sitting down while you are standing."

"No, I meant … emotionally."

"Oh." Brennan was very still, eyes unfocused again. "It's nothing," she finally admitted.

Cam pulled a chair closer to Brennan's desk and took a seat. "Did something happen with Booth?"

Brennan was a genius, literally, and miles ahead of everyone else where science or math was concerned. But in matters of the heart, in the vagaries of human emotions, she was generally the opposite of genius. Brennan struggled to understand the most basic nuances of feelings and motivations in others. So she was quite surprised to hear Cam zero in on the source of her woe, when she thought she'd been hiding her distress so well.

"Why do you think it has something to do with Booth," Brennan deflected.

"You're moping and he hasn't been by the lab in three days. It was a reasonable assumption that there's a correlation. Or, perhaps, cause and effect."

"Oh, I see. Yes, you've formulated a reasonable hypothesis from those observations."

Cam smiled a little fondly. Reasonable hypothesis indeed. "So, what happened?"

Brennan seemed to deliberate for a few moments, clearly working out whether to confide or deny whatever was troubling her. Finally, she reached a decision.

"You've known Booth a long time," Brennan said quietly.

"Yes, over 16 years now."

The twisting of her hands in her lap gave away just how unsettled Brennan was. If anything, her face had become even more drawn in the last moments. "Then you know how to make him feel better."

Cam leaned forward, curious and concerned. "Usually _you_ are the one who makes him feel better."

Brennan's silvery eyes sparkled brighter than usual, glazed in tears. "I … I can't. It's my fault."

"What's your fault," Cam asked gently.

"I crushed his heart," she whispered. "Metaphorically speaking."

Confusion was not an emotion that Cam enjoyed feeling. She held back a moment, giving Brennan a pause to regain control and herself a chance to figure out what she should say next. Getting more information seemed like the best approach, at least for now, so she asked again. "What happened?"

"He said he wanted to give us a chance." Brennan was twisting her hands relentlessly now.

"And you said no," Cam inferred.

"Yes. I mean, you are correct. I said no. I had to." Her hands stilled and clenched until the knuckles bled white.

"Why?"

To Cam's amazement, the tears that had been glazing Brennan's eyes now overflowed.

Brennan held Cam's gaze for a moment, but then she dropped her eyes and pressed her face into her hands. The only answer she could manage was "String Theory."

Both women remained silent for a moment. Brennan was pulling her scattered thoughts together and Cam was waiting for her to finish collecting them. When Brennan lifted her head and had recalled her errant tears, Cam decided to ask if String Theory extended to Booth.

"Does Booth know why you said no?"

It was a valid question, and Brennan gave it careful consideration before she answered. "I tried to explain, but I suspect he didn't grasp the nuances of what I was telling him. I was … very emotional. Perhaps I didn't express myself with my usual clarity."

"So, possibly he doesn't understand why you turned him down," Cam restated.

Brennan wasn't completely oblivious to the power of emotions; rather, she was relatively naïve as to the ways other people expressed them. She knew her partner was upset but she wasn't sure what she could do to fix it; she didn't even know where to begin. Brennan traced an idle finger along the edge of her desk, hating the truth but unable to avoid it. She couldn't help Booth, it would have to be someone else, someone who knew him well and cared about him. But Cam wouldn't be able to console Booth if she didn't know at least a little of what had happened.

"It wouldn't matter if he understood it or not. The result is the same. An insect doesn't understand the forces involved in a shoe crushing its carapace and damaging its body to the point of non-functionality. It dies, even in ignorance of the cause, because the damage is too great to overcome. I crushed Booth's heart. Even if he understands why, it won't reverse the damage."

"We're talking about emotions, however, not physical injury. Sometimes, the worst emotional damage is caused by lack of understanding. Sometimes knowing why can help mitigate damage."

Brennan shook her head, the tears flowing again. "He wants a romantic relationship, and I can't…."

Cam tilted her head curiously. "You can't. Does that mean you want to, but can't. Or that you can't because you don't want to."

Her brow knitted in bewilderment. "I don't know what that means."

"If your String Theory weren't an issue, would you want to be romantically involved with Booth?"

There was a very long pause. Cam wasn't sure Brennan was ever going to answer. But finally, the whispered reply reached her and sent Cam's own heart tilting over the edge.

"Yes."

It was the saddest 'yes' she'd ever heard.

~Q~

* * *

**A note about the title:**

I chose the title of String Theory because of both it's extremely complicated underpinnings—you have to be a Ph.D in physics to truly understand it—and because of what it is hoped that theory can do. Superstring Theory is moving us gradually towards a "theory of everything" that will unify the observations and predictions of both General Relativity and Quantum Physics, which without the 'strings' seem to be at odds with each other. Both Relativity and Quantum physics are amazing theories in their own spheres, but put them together and they clash.

Sounds a little like our two favorite crime fighters…. :)

If ever there was a shorthand way of describing how Brennan's mind works and the complicated nature of Booth and Brennan's relationship, String Theory is a contender. The depth of history and conflicting observations between those two can only be reconciled with a fundamental understanding of the forces that propelled them together and then held them apart. Understanding the dynamics between Booth and Brennan requires an extensive education in 'Bonesology.'

Please understand, when I use the word "theory" here, I mean in the scientific sense: a testable model that explains observations and makes verifiable predictions which are further tested and refined. In science, a theory is not a guess or hypothesis; it's not a fact, either. (In science, 'facts' are observations that have repeatedly been confirmed and are generally accepted as reliable and 'true.') A theory uses facts gathered from repeated tests to explain what is happening and that explanation in turn predicts what will happen next. Theories can be disproved by making new observations or finding new facts that dispute them but until that new evidence emerges, the theory holds as a reliable way to explain what is happening and why.

So, I present to you my 'theory' on what happened between Booth and Brennan that resulted in our observation of Brennan saying no and Booth deciding not to fight for her. I have this story completely written and I'm currently fine-tuning the last chapter.

Thank you for reading and I'm really excited to share my ideas with other Bones fans! :)


	2. What Happened

Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this is legally required, but it goes without saying that I don't own any of the characters, plot lines or dialogue from Bones.

**Chapter 2 – What Happened**

That was yesterday.

Today, not only had there been no improvement, but there had in fact been further deterioration. Brennan was looking even more haggard although aside from that one very brief lapse of control, she had fully regained her composure and had submerged herself in work. As a result, Booth's extended absence was drawing increasing attention and speculation from the denizens of the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal Laboratory. Frightfully expensive bets were being placed as to source and eventual resolution.

Pursing her lips, Cam decided she needed to get to the bottom of this fiasco, and the quicker the better. Other than Brennan, no one was even bothering to pretend they had jobs to do.

She placed a phone call to locate one errant Special Agent and marched the few blocks to the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover building.

As she'd been tipped off by his boss, Booth was sitting in his office behind a monument to bureaucracy, a leaning tower of files and papers. Cam paused in the doorway, observing the tired slope of his shoulders and more pronounced creases around his eyes. He looked just as weary as Brennan, but also bitter.

"Seeley, what's going on?" Cam asked bluntly. She felt a measure of satisfaction when she saw Booth stiffen in surprise. Catching him off guard gave her slightly better odds of drawing something out in the next few minutes. What Dr. Brennan lacked in emotional intelligence, Seeley Booth made up in spades, but so did Cam and this was one skirmish she was determined to win.

"Hi, Camille. What brings you here?"

"You not being at the Jeffersonian all week," she replied. Her lips twisted at his use of her proper name. They both hated their given names and used them against each other teasingly at every opportunity. It was the prerogative of being such old friends.

Booth gestured to the stack of paper accumulated on his desk. His eyes darted to the corners of the room. "No cases, lately. Got other stuff to do."

"That's never held you away before." She entered his office fully and shut the door behind her.

Booth had a talent for interrogation. He could look into someone's eyes and see the truth and the lies hiding there. He knew how to ferret out agendas, desires, wishes, motives, innocence and guilt. Regarding Cam Saroyan cautiously, he set to work figuring out what she was trying to learn.

"You're here about Bones."

"Indirectly, I guess you could say that."

He quirked up a brow. "Indirectly?"

Cam shrugged. "She didn't send me, if that's what you're wondering."

"No, she wouldn't. Of course not. That would require a heart."

The harsh tone set Cam's teeth on edge. Though Seeley Booth had been her friend for 16 years and Brennan was barely more than an acquaintance by comparison, Cam found herself feeling angry. At Booth. She wasn't going to let him know yet but Brennan had indeed sent Cam to comfort Booth. During that rare moment when the anthropologist had lost her usual icy shield, Cam had recognized it was due to her concern for her partner. Dr. Brennan had a very soft and fragile heart, and until this moment Booth was the one who knew that best. It was time to find out what had happened to make him so angry with his partner that he would forget who she was.

"I'm here to put a stop to the rampant gambling that's going on at the Jeffersonian—and here too, by the looks of things."

Booth's head snapped up. "Gambling?" He looked confused and uneasy.

"Yeah. Betting pools deep enough to float a tanker. Everyone is diving in, asking which one of you dumped the other. Is it because you two had sex, or because one of you wouldn't. Are you going to reconcile, or be split up. You're the talk of the town this week."

"Figures." He rubbed a tired hand over his face. "They need to mind their own damn business."

"So, what the hell happened?"

"None of your business either," he snapped.

Cam leaned down, placing her hands on his desk. "My best and brightest employee is wilting like the last rose of summer, and you're the cause. My other employees are so caught up in the soap opera that nothing is getting done and the bodies are literally piling up. I've got representatives from Gamblers Anonymous all but asking if we can have weekly meetings in the staff break room. So yes, it _is_ my business. I can't have her making mistakes because you've gone and screwed things up."

"I've screwed up?" He leaped to his feet, glowering at Cam furiously. "_She's_ the one…."

A smirk darted across Cam's mouth, lighting her eyes knowingly. "Oh, she started it?"

He shook his head angrily. "No, you are not getting away with that."

"With what?" she asked innocently. "Who started this, big guy? You, or Dr. Brennan."

"Sweets," he growled.

Cam let out a long sigh. Rolling her eyes, she dropped down on the edge of Booth's desk. "I should have known."

"Me, too," Booth admitted. "Shouldn't have listened to that idiot. I mean come on, he's twelve."

"What happened." She was getting very tired of asking the same question over and over again.

"Bones and I met with Sweets Monday afternoon, to discuss his book. We told him about our first case together." He paused to shoot a warning glare at Cam, but she wisely stayed silent. "You know what happened, you were there. You know that we kissed then."

Cam nodded. She knew because Booth had told her. After arresting and charging the judge, he'd spent about two hours with Cam in a pub ranting about the passionate, violent antics of one Dr. Temperance Brennan. Cam had never seen Seeley Booth so stirred up about anyone. Brennan set him on fire then doused him with ice water until he didn't know if he was burning or drowning, or both at the same time.

"Well, Sweets didn't," Booth continued. "He wrote in his book that the Cleo Eller case was our first case together. Bones thought that was a factual error that would affect his conclusions and we should set him straight. I don't know why she would care that much since she completely disregarded everything he'd written about us. She swore his conclusion wasn't valid and he'd misinterpreted everything."

Cam held back a chuckle, imagining Brennan ranting about Sweets's methodology. Tipping her head to the side, she offered Booth a bit more illumination on Brennan's frame of reference. "She's a scientist, Booth. Sweets's book is a case study that draws conclusions based on the evidence of your interactions together. His conclusions stand or fall entirely upon the accuracy of the information he has about you both. If he has the facts wrong, then his conclusions are invalid, automatically. From a scientific standpoint—even in the realm of social science—Brennan was right to correct his mistake."

That put her insistence on correcting Sweets into a better perspective, Booth had to admit. It also explained why Sweets had insisted they tell him every detail about their first case together. He'd thought it was merely nosy curiosity, but evidently Sweets was doing exactly what Cam had explained, checking to see if his conclusions about them were valid.

"Right. Well, Sweets wanted to know about the Arrington case, so we told him everything. After that, he said we were in love with each other. But Bones denied it."

"What did she say," Cam asked. "What were her exact words?"

He shook his head, suddenly realizing he should have paid more attention. God, she'd just blurted out her feelings right there. Why hadn't he listened? Why had he ignored what she'd said and pushed her where she clearly didn't want to go. "She said we're not in love with each other, like she always does."

Pursing her lips, Cam shook her head as well. "Usually what she says is that you're just partners or that you're not a couple. This time she said, 'with each other.' Don't you think that might be important?"

"You know that I love her, Cam. You've known for months."

"Yes." And Cam also knew that Brennan was in love with Booth. She had suspected it for over a year, but had come to know it with utter certainty when Brennan had half-admitted to deliberately down-playing the likelihood of a certain skeleton belonging to President Kennedy. Brennan had embraced uncertainty for Booth's peace of mind, yet Cam couldn't tell Booth this without rendering Brennan's sacrifice of historical truth pointless.

Hesitating, Cam considered what she suspected of Brennan's understanding of the situation between the partners and the risk of letting Booth know about that instead. "But does _she_ know…?"

He looked confused, then angry. "She knows now."

"But did she _then_?" Cam insisted.

With a shrug, he admitted, "I guess not."

"So Brennan stated a fact. As far as she knew in that moment, you were not in love with each other."

"Yeah, I guess," he conceded.

"So, what happened next?"

"Sweets told us we'd missed our chance and we needed to break the stalemate."

"Why," she asked pointedly. "If it's not broke, don't fix it. Right?"

"Yeah, right. In hindsight, I should have kept my mouth shut. Anyway, Sweets told me I had to be the one to do it."

"And why you?"

Booth's mouth twisted bitterly. "Because I'm the gambler."

The sinking sensation in her stomach felt very much like a rock plunging down into the depths of a lake. It was the same feeling she'd had when getting the phone call telling her that her mother had died. It was just that intense, just that foreboding. Cam couldn't stop the nervous gasp. "Oh, God…."

"So, I told her."

"Told her what."

"That I was the Gambler. That I wanted to take a chance on us."

Cam closed her eyes, suddenly feeling that String Theory wasn't such a difficult theoretical construct after all. She might be able to teach Stephen Hawking a few things when this conversation was finished. No wonder Brennan couldn't or wouldn't explain what had happened—she herself probably didn't fully understand what had gone wrong. "You … gambled on your partnership?"

"Yeah, I guess." He sank back into his chair. "And I lost."

Cam's mouth tightened into a hard line. "No, Temperance Brennan lost."

He looked up sharply. "She got what she wanted, okay? She doesn't want me. Nothing has changed. We're still partners. I'm moving on."

"Something has changed: you haven't shown up at the lab all week."

"I needed some time," he defended.

"You're angry, because she turned you down."

"I'll get over it," he muttered. "She certainly has."

"No she hasn't. And you have no right to be angry."

"No right? I put myself out there and she turned me down flat. She doesn't want me."

"Bull! That's … I can't believe this. You, of all people, should know better."

"What am I supposed to know? I tell her I knew right from the beginning, and all she can come up with is that she's a scientist. I mean, what the hell does that mean?"

"Seeley, you _gambled_ on your partnership. Did she enter that bet with you?"

Booth blinked, not quite understanding the question. "What, like an opening bid?"

"What did she say? When you told her you wanted to take a chance."

"Uh, she said the FBI would split us up."

"So, she didn't take the bet. She pointed out why it was a bad idea. She was worried it would end your partnership."

Booth paused, trying to remember exactly what had happened. "Yeah, I guess."

Cam nodded. "And how did you address her concern?"

He found himself looking out the window. "I said that wasn't a reason and kissed her."

"Did she kiss back?"

His eyes snapped back to hers, a retort forming, but it didn't emerge when he saw she wasn't looking for juicy details. She was looking for the facts. Her hard, knowing gaze was telling him he should reconsider the target for his anger. "No, she pushed me away and started crying. She said no."

There was pain in his voice, in the shadow behind Booth's eyes. Cam allowed herself to feel some sympathy. She had no doubt he was hurting, but much of it was self-inflicted. The rest was Sweets-inflicted, and she had every intention of spreading her wrath in that direction when the time was right. But first, to get Booth to see just how badly he'd misjudged Brennan.

"She was crying." Cam clenched her fists. "_Crying_, Seeley?"

"Yeah." His scowl added a silent '_don't call me Seeley_' for good measure.

"When was the last time you saw Dr. Brennan crying?" When he didn't answer, she supplied it for him. "When your tumor was diagnosed. When you were in that coma. When you were bleeding to death on the floor of the Checker Box. Any other time come to mind?"

"She cried when we put down Ripley," he said defensively. "When her dad left her. And when Sully left."

Cam pinned him with her eyes. "So, let's look at the history here. Temperance Brennan cries when someone she cares about leaves, or when someone she loves is dying."

"Ripley was a dog."

"A dead dog. My point stands."

He glared at her. "If you have a point, get to it."

"Why do you think she started crying? Were they tears of joy?"

"No," he spat. "She was upset. I kissed her and she pushed me away."

"And she cried," Cam stated emphatically. "What was she losing at that moment?"

"Nothing!" he shouted defensively. "She said insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome."

"Is that when you told her you knew from the beginning?"

"Yes."

"Did you tell her that you love her? Did you say the words?"

He froze, wariness entering his face for the first time. "No, I didn't say that. I just … I begged her to give me a chance."

"I know what happened at the beginning, you had the hots for her. Is that the chance you wanted her to give you?"

"No! God, Cam, what do you think I am?"

Cam tapped her fingers on the stack of files with each emphasized word. "A _chance_. A _gamble_. She says the FBI will _split you up_, but instead of talking about that, you _dismissed_ her concern and _kissed_ her. She starts _crying_. You say you knew from the beginning, and she knows what it was like at the beginning—she was _there_. It was lust, you said it yourself that night when you told me about it. You never said you love her. In Sweets's office, she said you weren't in love _with each other_. That means she didn't know. You see what that looks like?"

"No," he answered darkly.

"It looks like you gambled your partnership with Brennan on sex."

"What?!" He leaped to his feet, outraged.

"You gambled on _sex_, Booth, because that's the only thing you two didn't have. If you two start having sex and it doesn't work out, your partnership ends. If she agrees and the FBI finds out, your partnership ends. If she doesn't take the gamble with you and says no to sex, you get mad and your partnership ends. She loses you, no matter what."

"I— that's not…." Staring down at the floor, Booth was suddenly feeling sick.

Cam grabbed his arm, grounding him so he wouldn't miss the importance of her final jab. "Why do you think she cares about your partnership so much, Seeley Booth? _She loves you._ And don't you dare sit there trying to tell me she doesn't because I _saw_ her when she thought you were dead and I _saw_ her when you were in a coma for days. I watched what it did to her. Losing you is the most terrifying thing she's ever had to face and she's faced it _twice_ already. You throw sex at her and all she sees is losing you again. She thinks she's lost you because of this gamble of yours and she is sitting in her office right now barely able to function. Now, tell me again: who _really_ lost that bet….?"

"Oh God." He stood speechless, disgusted with himself. His anger at Brennan was starting to look tragically unjustified, just as Cam had said.

Cam relaxed a little now that she'd made him see reason and consequence. "You should know by now that for you gambling is never a good idea. You smell the potential win and lose your head."

"I swear, I never thought of it that way. I just wanted her to imagine us as a couple."

"Look, I know love can make us do crazy things, but Seeley, you went about that all wrong. God, I warned you, that night at the Founding Fathers."

"You told me I should be sure of my feelings. I am."

She leveled him with a solid glare. "I thought it went without saying that you shouldn't rush in like a bull in a china shop."

He worked his jaw furiously. "I didn't—"

"Yeah, you did." She interrupted. "Sweets told you to take a gamble and your eyes lit up like a Vegas casino. You couldn't have handled this any worse if you'd tried."

"Gee, thanks," he snarled. Pushing tired hands through his hair, he wondered what he was going to do now.

Cam wasn't finished. "Look, there's something else you need to understand."

"You don't say. Of course there's more." Booth couldn't imagine there was still more bad news coming his way.

"Even if you get this gambling mess straightened out. Even if you tell her you love her, I'm not sure she'll be willing to get into a romantic relationship with you."

"But, you just sat there telling me she loves me," he sputtered.

"She does. But there's something that's holding her back. Something complicated." Cam forced him to meet her gaze, willed him to understand just how important this was. "If you love her, you may have to settle for just being partners once you understand why that limit has to exist."

"So, what, you're telling me it's hopeless?"

"No, I'm telling you this is a delicate situation. You need to get her to talk to you. You need to listen to her. You need to address her worries and fears. And you need to respect the fact that Brennan has some serious millstones weighing her down. Just because she loves you doesn't mean she can take off and fly."

Clenching his jaw, he slammed a fist down onto his desk. "I know that, Cam!"

Irritated, she snapped back, "Yeah, well, you seem to have forgotten all that when you decided the best approach was, 'hey, let's gamble our partnership!'"

"Are you done?" he asked acidly.

Frost tinged her voice. "Nearly."

"Great. It's been a pleasure."

She stared him down, nonplussed. "What kind of friend would I be, if I didn't point out how badly you've screwed up something good?" At that, he dropped out of their little staring contest. She continued more compassionately, "Look, I know you love her. I know you would never intentionally hurt her. But, she's hurt. You're hurt. I don't want either one of you to be hurt."

Booth sighed. "I know. I'm sure I'll be a lot more grateful once I've figured out how to fix this."

Cam stood up, knowing he needed time to think. "I'll try talking to her again, but I'm not sure how much she'll confide in me. Frankly, the only reason she told me anything at all is because I caught her off guard. She decided very rationally that you needed consoling and that as an old friend, I could help."

This hit him harder than Cam had expected. He actually went a little pale. "You mean, she _did_ send you?"

"Yeah, indirectly, like I said. The woman you just accused of being heartless deliberately told me enough to know I should come talk to you because she thinks she broke your heart. And that's tearing her apart."

~Q~

Note: I wrote these first three chapters right after watching the 100th episode the first time. I was angry at Booth-it's crazy to be angry with a fictional character, I know-and trying to knock some sense into him. Who better to do that than Cam, right?

Over the years, I've been rewatching old episodes and trying to figure out what was going on. The insights have come slowly, one revelation at a time.


	3. Reading the Signs

Standard Disclaimer: Don't own anything much, and certainly not the fascinating characters of Bones.

Author's Note: Thank you to the people who have kindly offered their reviews. I appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts with me. And without further ado, here is chapter three.

**Chapter 3 – Reading the Signs**

As if he couldn't believe this, Booth shook his head. He recalled something Cam had said only moments ago and wondered why she'd said it. "You said she loves me, because she cried when she thought I was hurt or dying. But you cried, too. So did Angela. You're not in love with me, Angela isn't. What makes you so sure Bones loves me like…."

"You mean, how do I know she's in love with you?"

"Yeah." He met her eyes earnestly, hopefully. "She's always telling everyone she doesn't love me."

"You drew a line, remember? You broke it off with me all those years ago, telling me people who work in dangerous jobs shouldn't get involved. You told her that, too."

"How do you know that?" he wondered.

With a smug little grin, she informed him, "Girls have locker rooms too, you know."

Off his scowl she added, "She's been holding your line for years. Then last Monday night when you changed your tune so fast, she didn't have time to put on her dance shoes."

"She's not in love with me. I'd know. I would _know_…."

Cam bit her lip, wondering if she should give him some evidence that would prove the claim. He'd never spoken about it, so she wasn't sure if he knew that Brennan had stayed in the surgical suite when his brain tumor was excised. If he understood the implications of that act, he wouldn't doubt Brennan's feelings at all. Deciding to take the most oblique route, Cam started with a casual observation. "Brennan stayed with you the whole time you were in the hospital last year."

"I know, Cam."

"She never left your side."

"I know."

Tilting her head, she continued cautiously, "She went in to watch the surgery."

Cam expected him to be surprised, and was astonished to find herself being surprised instead.

"I know, Cam. I asked her to."

"What," she gasped. "You _asked_ her to. I thought.…" She broke off, still stunned. She'd thought it was Brennan's idea, Brennan's ferocity, Brennan's need for control. Never once would she have thought that _he_ was the one who'd suggested it. Considering this revelation as the bombshell it was, Cam took a moment to regroup. She was more certain than ever that she held the proof of Brennan's heart in the information she was about to share with him. Kennedy need never come up—this would be proof enough.

"Did you understand what you were asking her to do?"

Booth frowned quizzically. "Of course. I asked her to watch, to make sure the doctors didn't screw up."

"And she agreed?"

He paused to consider. "I don't think she wanted to. She agreed, though, when I told her she's the only one I trusted. She had a hard time convincing the surgeon to let her in, but you know Bones once she latches onto an idea." He grinned and shrugged, as if it were the smallest of favors one could ask of a friend.

_Ignorance truly is bliss_, Cam thought. Booth had no idea what he'd asked his partner to do. She'd always suspected that surgery was at least part of the reason Brennan had bolted to Guatemala the moment Booth opened his eyes. It would have been a nightmare for the anthropologist to watch. Cam eased herself down into one of the chairs opposite his desk, preparing herself for a long explanation that he wasn't quite educated enough to appreciate. Another example of String Theory, but this time it had to be fully mapped out.

"In order to become a physical anthropologist, Dr. Brennan had to study human anatomy and physiology—not just the bones, but the workings of the entire body. That's how she can tell you that a nick here or a gouge there would potentially be fatal. She knows where the muscles attach, the ligaments bind, and the blood vessels run. She knows the human body as well as I do."

He knew this and gestured impatiently for her to get to the point.

"From those classes, Dr. Brennan learned about physiological reactions. She understands what happens when an allergic reaction causes the blood pressure to drop, for example; that it leads to the cascade reaction of hypovolemic shock, leading in turn to eventual cardiac arrest. She knows the Glasgow Coma Scale and could tell you the criteria for each value on the scale. She could explain each test doctors run when evaluating for level of consciousness and brain function. She could recite the signs and symptoms to you if you asked her to, and she would certainly recognize it if she saw it happening to someone."

Booth looked uncomfortable again. "I know, I've seen her give first aid."

"All of what I've just described is what Brennan saw happen to you during your operation, when you reacted badly to the anesthesia."

"Okay," he agreed blankly.

Cam leaned forward, trying to impress upon him what he did not know. "There's a reason doctors aren't allowed to treat people they know."

He shook his head. "Bones wasn't treating me, and she can compartmentalize."

"Seeley. It's too hard to take when you know the person. You can't stop knowing the risks, the implications. You can't stop knowing how badly things are going wrong when you see certain signs. You can't compartmentalize, no matter how much you want to."

He looked at her reluctantly, suddenly afraid of what Cam was going to say next.

"Dr. Brennan stood in that surgical suite and watched them use a Stryker bone saw on you, the same one I use during autopsies, the same saw she uses. She watched them use it to cut open _your_ skull. She smelled bone dust that was your bone dust. She watched them cut through meninges that were _your_ meninges. She watched the surgeon use a scalpel to excise that blastoma from _your_ brain. She went in there knowing that was _exactly_ what she was going to see. It was deeply, intensely personal, Booth. It was _you_."

"I … I know that."

"She went in there knowing that, if something went wrong, she would stand helplessly by and witness it all. She would know precisely what was happening, every symptom, every action the doctors took, and she would not be able to do anything but watch. And she will never be able to forget what she saw. She has that eidetic memory that is so impressive and so aggravating—she'll never forget that moment. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

He was starting to look sick again.

"When you reacted badly to the anesthetic, your blood pressure crashed. She knew the signs, she knew you were dying. She watched the doctors scramble to save your life. She knew why they were calling for norepinephrine, why they were shouting out blood pressure readings and what each successively lower set of numbers indicated. She knew why they were checking your pupils and your Babinski reflexes. She heard them say 'negative response Babinski,' and 'pupils fixed and dilated,' and she knew that meant vital areas of your brain were shutting down. You nearly died, Seeley, and just like the year before, she stood by helplessly while you slipped away. When she came out of that surgery, she looked like she needed to be hospitalized right next to you."

"I didn't think it would be like that," he defended. "She didn't either."

"She just didn't tell you what the risks really were. She didn't want you to worry. I'm sure she made it seem easy so you wouldn't be scared." Cam grabbed his hand, needing him to understand how willingly Brennan had undergone that hell for him. "But she knew that she might have to watch you die, because there's always a risk during surgery. Do you understand me? She went into that room knowing there was a chance you might die in there. She faced witnessing your death head on because you asked her to."

Silence roared in the void as Cam finished showing him Brennan's hell. Booth swallowed down a queasy cocktail of guilt, horror and self-disgust. He'd not realized, not understood what he was asking her to do that day. But Brennan knew, and she'd done it anyway.

Cam stood, bending down to deliver one final blow. "She would do anything for you. If that's not love, then I don't know what is."

"Cam…." He didn't know what to think, but at least he was attempting to charge up the grey matter. He sighed. "I can't believe you're here defending her. I thought you didn't even like Bones."

"Of course I like her," Cam retorted. Then a small grin tugged at her lips. "I've grown rather fond of Brennan over the years."

"You hide it well," he offered with a sigh.

Shrugging, she mused, "I have a reputation as a hard-ass to maintain."

After a moment of consideration, Cam started speaking again. "You know, when I first took this job, you told me that you'd pick Brennan over me. I was threatening to fire her, and both you and Angela warned me that everyone else would quit if I did. For the life of me, I could not figure out how that awkward, stubborn woman could engender such _loyalty_ in her coworkers, and in you. You told me to look deeper.

"Well, I did. It took me a while, but I started to see it too. She came to me, we worked out a solution and over time, I've come to see what an incredible friend she is. Did you know I adopted Michelle because Brennan suggested it? It wasn't my idea. It honestly never occurred to me until Brennan came to me and proposed that it would be 'most logical' for me to become Michelle's caregiver. I was reluctant at first, but she reasoned me right into it. Over this last year I've been incredibly grateful for the gift of having Michelle in my life. I owe that to your partner."

He looked startled. Brennan had only told him that Cam would be adopting the orphaned teen. Brennan was often immodest about her appearance, her intelligence, her work accomplishments. But when it came to acts of kindness and generosity, she always hid her efforts behind anonymity and, where that failed, logic.

Cam continued before he could fully come to terms with this latest revelation. "I've come to admire her honesty and passion for the truth. I've even seen how good she is for you, all the ways you've become a better man since knowing her. I respect her.

"You're the one who made me find that incredible heart in Brennan. I'm just sorry that you're the one who's stopped seeing it. We've come full circle it seems. Today, if it came down to a choice, I might actually choose her over you."

With that, Cam walked out of his office.

~Q~

Author's Note: So, Booth has a lot to think about. He also has a partner who might welcome the opportunity to explain what has her so upset...


	4. Not Giving Up

Standard Disclaimer: Still don't own Bones.

Author's Note: So, when I wrote those chapters, I was really angry with Booth and wishing somebody existed who had the nerve to make him wake up and see what he'd done wrong. Cam ... she's perfect for this. I love her for her classy composure, her hilariously dry wit, and the bold way she has of telling Booth off when he needs it. We all need those old friends who know us and aren't afraid to let us know when we've just gone off the deep end.

In my heart I want to believe that Booth is not afraid of a fight, not even with our ferocious Temperance Brennan. If someone would just nudge him in the right direction, he will do the right thing. So, here he goes...

**Chapter 4 – Not Giving Up**

When Seeley Booth finally entered the Jeffersonian, it was dusk on that Friday evening. Most of the staff had gone home for the night, leaving only a few stragglers who were hurrying to finish up and begin the weekend. He slipped silently along the left side corridor, skirting the large open area and heading towards his partner's office. He hoped he would find her there.

Since Cam had left him a few hours before, he'd had some time to think. He'd thought he understood what Brennan was saying when she'd said no. All the years of arguments between them over the nature of love had ended in stalemate: he believed in love; she didn't. Even though he'd fallen in love with her, she did not—could not—reciprocate. Isn't that what she'd meant, when she'd said she couldn't change? Isn't that why she'd said he needed protection from her…? That is what he'd thought, and while he was upset, he had only himself to blame. Only a romantic fool would fall for a woman who'd flat-out told him she didn't believe in love.

But, Cam had just now told him that Brennan did love him, that she'd said no for some other reason. Everything he thought he knew might not be true.

He knew he needed to get her to talk to him again, and hopefully this time he would draw out the truth and help her do a better job explaining. He knew he would have to do a much better job listening. Maybe there was a chance for them after all.

When he reached the window looking into her office, he paused and looked inside. Brennan was sitting on the floor by her sofa, a wide patch of files and texts spread out in a fan around her. There was a banker's box of files at her right elbow. She was turned and thumbing through it, pulling up a folder to squint at the label every few moments. Her brow furrowed as she moved backwards through the files, evidently in frustration as the particular case she sought refused to reveal itself. Finally, about 2/3 through, she pulled one all the way out and flipped it open.

After reading through reports and checking an x-ray, Brennan bent toward an old-fashioned legal pad and made some notes. Once finished writing, she quickly stuffed the case file back into the place from which she'd extracted it, then turned back towards a large tome on her left. That book Booth thought he recognized. She used it a lot when she had a new grad student. Human Osteology. It was essentially an atlas of human bones, an invaluable resource when small bits of bone were proving difficult to identify.

He found himself silently watching his partner work, the way he used to in the earliest days of their partnership. Once upon a time, nothing had pleased him more than stealing covert glances and quiet moments of open admiration when she wasn't paying attention. She was beautiful, graceful, and yet so defensive that he knew sneaking those peeks was a limb-threatening risk. As their friendship had grown, she'd mellowed and he'd found less of a need to sneak his glances in. She allowed him to watch her openly and they'd often talked while she worked. For tonight, watching her silently again gave him a few moments to gather his thoughts and see how she was doing since his disastrous gamble Monday night.

If he had to guess what she was doing, he would say that she was preparing research for a paper, something he hadn't seen her working on in quite a while. Her concentration never wavered and from his vantage point, nothing seemed wrong at all. Perhaps Cam had overstated Brennan's dysfunction, because from what Booth could see, she looked just fine.

He continued to observe for a few moments longer while he decided how to begin. As she was paging through the osteology book, the pages turned slower and slower, until her hand stilled and her entire body suddenly seemed to slump. Brennan pulled her hand back into her lap and stared downward. Anyone who didn't know Brennan as well as Booth did might think she was praying. She held still for a long while, then lifted a hand to her face. The gesture she made, her arm moving outward, her fingers sliding across her cheek, told him Cam hadn't been wrong.

He was.

Brennan was crying.

The shock of realization froze him for a moment.

With a sinking feeling, Booth finally moved and rapped gently on her office door.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her stiffen, her tears hastily wiped away. By the time he stepped all the way into the room she looked almost completely composed. But she didn't look up from the array of papers. She began absently flipping through her osteology book again.

"Hi, Bones," he greeted her softly.

"Booth." She slowly lifted her face to him, keeping her expression neutral. "Is there a case?"

He winced, noting the evidence of her tears still remaining. From her question, he realized she thought he'd been avoiding her. He'd hoped it wasn't obvious but it was, obviously. Well, it was true, he _had_ been avoiding her, but he didn't want her to think so. As angry as he'd been, hurting her hadn't been his intention.

For the last year, he'd found some reason to visit the lab every day, case or not. He'd come for lunch, and returned for dinner. He'd found excuses to see her after work and on weekends, keeping her so busy that she'd not worked on any research projects in all that time. Not until now when she suddenly had hours of loneliness to fill. Even for his sweetly clueless partner, his sudden, prolonged absence on the heels of their last meeting could only be interpreted as avoidance.

With a sigh, he confessed, "Sorry I've been AWOL the last few days. I've been buried alive in paperwork."

At least that was mostly true.

"It's okay," she replied tonelessly. She returned her gaze to the book but didn't seem to really pay attention to anything.

"I needed some time to think," he added.

"I understand."

"What are you working on," he inquired, not quite ready to plunge them both back into the emotionally turbulent conversation he was about to initiate.

"Angela and I are planning to write an article together for the Journal of Forensic Sciences. I'm doing some preliminary research on some of our cases where we've done approximations on facial reconstructions. Angela has some ideas on how to make more specific calculations and avoid using generalized tables when working with incomplete specimens."

He was surprised. "Angela, huh. I didn't know publishing was her sort of thing." Or calculations, he added silently to himself.

"Publish or perish, Booth. To stay relevant as an expert witness, Angela needs to publish an occasional article just as much as Cam, Hodgins, or I do."

"Oh. Sure. That makes sense."

An awkward silence fell between them. Booth shifted his weight, trying to remember when they'd last experienced such an uncomfortable moment together. He didn't know what to say, or where to start.

Brennan kept her focus on the legal pad, her pen making idle circles in the margin. She wanted to ask why he'd come, why he'd stayed away, and how they were going to get through the next few minutes, but nervousness held her tongue. She was afraid of what he'd tell her. Barely able to breathe for the unpleasant anticipation that gripped her, Brennan felt herself uncharacteristically paralyzed as she waited for the next blow to fall. All she could do was stare blindly at the circles looping in the margins, endless circling. They were going nowhere.

Booth cleared his throat and slowly lowered himself to the floor. A row of papers and a stack of books separated them now, a tiny wall of academia and a huge gulf of misunderstanding. He ran his hand over the cover the top book, a CRC Press offering on Forensic Taphonomy. He didn't know what taphonomy was. There was a grayscale photograph of skeletons in the dirt. The cover was firm, satiny-smooth, edged in bloody red. The photo was depressing.

"Bones, I want to ask you something."

"Okay," she agreed uneasily.

"What did you mean when you said I needed to be protected from you?"

Brennan froze, unnerved that he'd gone straight for the only question she didn't know how to answer. She'd blurted that out in a moment of unthinking shock—it was the truth but not one she could easily explain. Tension pulled her shoulders down and kept her head from lifting all the way up. She struggled to find the words that would make him understand, the words to make him agree a romantic relationship between them was doomed to failure. She needed the words that would deflect him enough to let her avoid the real reason, the unspeakable damage she'd already done….

She was an author, she could craft words, beautifully descriptive words—but only when she had time to test them out first, to taste them and listen to them and roll them around the spaces inside her brain. Put her on the spot and she would blurt out the first words to come to mind half the time. The other half, she might not come up with any words at all. Brennan knew she wasn't so eloquent under the pressure of immediacy and immediate is what had been called for when Booth made his request.

Fortunately, she'd had enough time since then to replay that dreadful conversation several times through and the natural result was that she'd amassed a sizeable backlog of statements falling under the category of _'what I should have said was….'_

So she pulled out the first thought that came to mind. The first thing she should have said last Monday night. "We're not compatible, you know that. You've said it yourself. We argue … all the time. About everything."

He shook his head, disagreeing even about this, which ironically proved her point. "No, we bicker."

"It's bickering when there's nothing at stake. But what you're asking for, Booth, that's everything. Everything will be at stake. How can we build a life together when we can't agree on the fundamental things like marriage, children, religion. We'll hurt each other."

"No, we can work it out. We always work things out."

She pinched her lips in a minor flash of frustration at his typically irrational approach to life in general. Always acting on his gut impulses, Booth rarely thought things all the way through. "One of us would have to change. Who is going to give up their ideals? Are you willing to give up marriage and children raised in the Catholic faith? Or will I have to agree to those things? We can't both have our way. It's one or the other, there's no way to compromise."

"We don't have to decide all that right now, Bones. You're giving up too soon."

"No, I'm being rational. It won't work out, we'll hurt each other and then, you'll leave. I … I can't lose you." Her voice shook, her eyes pleading. "Please, it's better this way. We can still be friends."

"I want more than that," he urged. "Don't you?"

Turning away from the temptation of his persuasive chocolate gaze, she gave herself space to resist what he was proposing. The risk was too great. A ripple of pain trembled in her words. "Not if it means losing you."

He leaned forward, raising her chin with his fingers and forcing her to look at him. "You won't lose me. I love you. I don't care about that other stuff. I just want _you_. I don't want you to change for me."

Hearing his words made her turn a pleading glance his way. "Booth…."

"I love you, Temperance Brennan, exactly the way you are. Tell me you don't love me."

Feeling cornered, she shook her head. "I can't do this. Please, Booth. Please stop."

"Do you love me? Answer me." He kept his voice soft, cajoling. He needed to hear her answer but this time he remembered to be gentle with her. The one thing he counted on was the fact that Brennan didn't lie. If he asked her directly, she would tell the truth. "Do you love me, Bones?"

A long pause sounded while she stared the truth in the eyes. Brennan had never avoided the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or painful. She couldn't start now. So it was with great reluctance that she admitted, "Yes," and tried to add on an addendum, "but that—"

Not giving her time to finish, Booth pulled her up onto her knees, covering her mouth with a tender kiss. His fingers threaded into her hair, his palms cupping her jaw. He pressed reverent kisses against her lips, her cheek, her eyes, her forehead. "You're so beautiful," he breathed against her. "Your eyes, your mind. Your heart."

Taking her mouth again, he urged her lips apart, giving his tongue entrance into the silken cavern beyond. He felt her trembling, her breaths coming in soft, irregular gasps. He pushed for more, his arms wrapping around her and pulling her more firmly against him.

She moaned softly, leaning into him in momentary surrender. The sweet invasion swept all sensibility away, his touch, scent and taste overwhelming her reason so thoroughly that all she could do was feel. Nothing mattered but that the pleasurable torment continue until their bodies fused into one. Just like he'd promised her once.

It was what she wanted more than anything, and what she feared beyond everything. Alarm began clawing at her as she realized anew just how thoroughly his touch could devastate her ability to remain clear-headed. She'd almost forgotten the power he unknowingly held over her.

Booth sensed Brennan's growing panic when her muscles tightened under his hands. Breaking away from the kiss that was threatening to scare her away, he trailed a searing line of caresses along the length of her throat, felt her pulse skipping under his lips when he paused near her collar bone. He knew he had to slow down—if he pushed her too hard, she would run again. Reluctantly, he placed a kiss on her chin, on the tip of her nose, and he eased away from her.

"Why are you doing this," she asked weakly.

He'd let go of her gradually, allowing Brennan to settle back onto her haunches and slowly recover her equilibrium. Booth felt a shuddering sigh pass through his own body as his rioting senses adjusted to the loss of her proximity. Now that he'd tasted her again and recalled just how amazing it was between them, he was more determined than ever to resolve her fears. He wouldn't let her push him away again.

"I didn't do this right before," Booth explained. "I'm sorry for that, for rushing you and not giving you enough time to adjust. I know I said I was going to move on, but that was me being stupid. I gave up way too soon."

"You have to," she contradicted. "Just let it go."

"No. Not without a fight. You're worth fighting for, Bones."

Inexplicably, her face twisted in pain, the shadows in her eyes darkening them to pewter. "No, I'm not."

Astonished at the lack of self-esteem her statement indicated, he betrayed his confusion with a gasped question. "What do you mean? Of course you're worth it."

"This isn't real," she murmured, as if reminding herself. "It's not real."

"Of course it's real."

"No."

Her head was shaking. Her hands, too, when she clenched them together in her lap. He watched her backing away, watched her become engulfed in something that looked very much like a waking nightmare.

"Bones, talk to me. Please."

"I can't." Her voice caught on an almost breathless sob as she lifted her pleading eyes to his. "Please, just…."

"You owe me an explanation," he insisted. But he couldn't have anticipated how his demand would hit her. She recoiled as if slapped.

She did. She owed him this, the evidence that would make him give up his pursuit as the hopeless cause it was. The outcome that would fix them back into their proper roles, their partnership safe and stability restored. Could she do it? Brennan closed her eyes for a moment, centering herself. She was a genius, she could do this. She could provide the expert testimony that would show him the truth he'd forgotten.

The truth of them. That's what he'd forgotten.

~Q~

Author's Note: Brennan has a story to tell. Booth (and you, dear readers) will be hearing it soon. My plan is to update every day until the story is complete. It's already finished except for some final editing on the last chapter.

In case anyone is curious, I try to be as scientifically accurate in my writing as possible. The research paper Brennan is working on is inspired by an actual paper written by Kathy Reichs.

Reichs, K. J., and Craig, E. Facial approximation: Procedures and pitfalls. In the book, _Forensic Osteology: Advances in the identification of Human Remains_, 2nd Ed., pg 491-512.

And the two books mentioned are just two of the many forensic books I have sitting on my bookshelf.

White, Black & Folkens, _Human Osteology_, 3rd Ed.,  
Haglund & Sorg, _Advances in Forensic Taphonomy: Method, Theory and Archaeological Perspectives_.


	5. He Had it All Wrong

Disclaimer still in effect: Thanks to the wonderful writers of Bones, whose brilliant lines of dialog are peppering this chapter. They provide fodder for interpretation (and maybe even some misinterpretation).

Author's Note: A lot of this story hinges on perception, how we understand ourselves and others. If it seems one-sided, there is a reason for that. Hopefully you will trust me that "this is going somewhere."

**Chapter 5 – He Had it All Wrong**

Drawing a deep, steadying breath, Brennan forced herself to meet his gaze head on. He had changed and she needed him to understand why, needed him to understand what he was doing. She'd thought she understood what the game was, had watched and gathered information and evidence over the years that explained what they could and couldn't be.

It been a kind of game over the years, each move and counter-move a variation on the same old theme: partners, friends, never more than that. She had thought she understood the game, but everything that had happened before only confused her now that Booth had forgotten himself and changed the rules. She needed to make him understand the old parameters so they could return to the game they'd played for years.

He'd forgotten so much, gotten too confused and now everything was threatening to unravel.

Though the very idea of it terrified her, went against every notion of self-preservation and defense that had carried her this far in life, Brennan knew she had to tell him everything. Absolutely everything. He had forgotten his own truth, so she had to replace it with hers. That meant she had to expose herself, open herself to him. No more secrets because he was right: she owed him this.

"When we were first working together, you told me agents and consultants couldn't date, that the FBI regulations forbade that. Do you remember?"

He nodded, opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. When she'd tried to explain this before, he'd stopped her with a kiss. This time, he needed to listen because she needed him to understand why this was so wrong.

"You told me that, and then you got me drunk and you fired me only a few hours after you laughed and told me I was hot for hitting Judge Hasty. I wondered why."

"Caroline—" he began, but she stopped him again with a quelling gesture.

"I've always known I'm not good with people. Even after all I've learned from you, I still have difficulty understanding why people do things. It was even harder for me then. I really wanted to know what you were thinking. That night, I tried to figure out what you were doing, Booth. Why the tequila and why you fired me when a few hours earlier you seemed to approve of me hitting the judge. The only thing that made sense was, I thought it meant you wanted me."

She lifted her gaze to him, finally ready to explain what she'd felt that night. He needed to know. "I hoped I was right, that you fired me so we could be together."

Shock widened his eyes.

"You seemed so noble and honest," she continued, her conviction growing stronger as she narrated her point of view to him. This was not the sanitized version she'd shared with Sweets a few nights ago. This was honest and raw, starkly direct in the way that only Temperance Brennan could be.

"You were marvelously attractive. I found myself responding to your symmetry, your muscle definition, but it was more than just your physical structure. There was something else happening and it was overwhelming. I looked at you and I felt connected in a way I'd never experienced before. It was completely irrational. The feelings were intense. Even though part of me understood what was happening physiologically, I'd never had that experience before. I knew it was merely biochemicals traveling through my limbic system, but no one had ever activated those chemicals in me. It was something about _you_. And it wasn't just sexual attraction, Booth. It wasn't. I knew this was different. I could _feel_ the difference."

She shook her head, drawing another steadying breath. "I wanted to believe you felt it, too, because of the way you were looking at me. Your eyes, they were warm."

Sexual attraction was easily recognized by the dilation of pupils, flushing of the skin, increased rates of respiration and pulse. She knew exactly what was happening to his body when he looked at her as a man who wants a woman. Those first two days, however, had shown her something else, something she'd only ever seen glimpses of in the years since. It had started with the moment he'd given her a name. Ever since, she'd lived for those fleeting flashes of warmth, when his eyes looked like chocolate and her heart soared in the thermal draft of his affection.

"I wasn't sure, though, so I tested you. I offered you sex."

Memories of that hazy night in the pool hall slammed into Booth, the way she'd tossed down the shots of Tequila like it was water. The grin of approval when he'd shown her his new, racy necktie. The glint in her amazing eyes as she leaned in and suggested there was nothing stopping them from having sex. The Brennanesque bluntness of it had caught him off guard and plunged him into the most intense state of arousal he'd ever experienced. Booth distinctly remembered his throat going bone dry and the feeling that baser parts of his anatomy were about to explode. Just the simple memory of how badly he'd wanted her brought him almost to the same state of excitement he'd found himself in that night.

Her voice broke through the sensual memory and reminded him that he still had more to learn. "You went for it so fast that I … I started to doubt you again. I was afraid you got me drunk and fired me to seduce me. I was prepared to get you sexually aroused and then ditch you as revenge. That's what I intended."

"You were going to—" he broke off, not quite willing to actually vocalize the crude term with her. Recalling again that flash of pure calculation he'd noticed in her eyes as she leaned in, he almost laughed at himself now, nearly six years later. He'd been far too drunk to keep up with her quicksilver mind. Even sober he couldn't keep up.

"You'd have deserved it."

"If I'd actually gotten you drunk to seduce you, yes, I would have deserved it. But I didn't. So it was cruel of you to leave me hanging."

" I didn't."

"Yeah you did, Bones. You left me standing in the rain with a raging case of unsatisfied desire."

"When you told me you had a gambling problem, when you said you thought we were going somewhere, I had hope again because why would you tell me that if all you wanted was sex? I'd already shown you that I was willing, so a seduction line wasn't necessary. It was so confusing and so powerful, everything I was feeling. When we kissed, it was … inexpressible. I've never felt that way before—it was more exhilarating than bhang only it was coming from you. I felt like you branded me; and you said we were going somewhere, as if you were feeling it, too. That's why I said no to just sex and went home. I wanted to be sober. I wanted it to start out right between us."

Booth felt as if the floor were dropping away from him, grabbing his stomach and pulling it down into an abyss. He was well and truly stunned as Brennan revealed everything that she'd felt, and he became aware that he'd understood nothing at all about what had happened between them.

"I wanted you to call me and ask me out properly. You said you would, if we weren't working together."

Flabbergasted, he shook his head and tried to grasp how different they might be if he'd have just faced her without the tequila all those years ago. "I never got the chance. Caroline ordered me to hire you back the next morning."

She nodded. "The next day you hired me back without explanation. You didn't even mention what had happened the night before. The evidence was clear: it was just sex you wanted after all, and you gave up on me as soon as I wouldn't. What you told me was just a line to get me into bed, and I almost fell for it. I did fall for it."

Pain had thickened her voice.

"You said no," he reminded her.

She shook her head. "I was saying yes to more. You said you would ask me out so I was giving you the signal that I wanted you to ask. I thought you understood. But you … you only wanted sex. I was wrong. I'd mixed up the motive. Again."

Brennan's eyes were haunted as she continued. "What I was feeling had deluded me. I'd misjudged you so badly and you could hurt me so much. I can't read people. You proved that. You were just one more proof that feelings can't be trusted."

_"Love is a chemical process that causes delusion!"_ She'd fired that off while leaning over his desk a year ago, eyes flashing and face set in harsh lines. There had been an underlying current of anger in her arguments that day, anger that suddenly had a source.

"Oh my God," he whispered, horrified, as understanding struck like a hammer. He'd tried to explain the next day that the Tequila was for himself, to give him the courage to end their brief partnership on Assistant Federal Prosecutor Caroline Julian's orders, but by then she'd been too angry to hear him. She hadn't known then that the reason he'd fired and rehired her was all due to Caroline Julian. That truth hadn't fully been realized until they'd laughed over it years later during drinks at the Founding Fathers. But that night at the pool hall, the next morning at the FBI, she didn't know. Because he'd never really explained.

He hadn't thought he would need to explain it to someone as sophisticated as Brennan had seemed. A woman who traveled the world, was highly educated, was unafraid to initiate a kiss and run away with teasing laughter, surely didn't need to be told he was interested in her.

Except, underneath that layer of sophistication was an almost innocent young woman who had never fallen in love before and didn't know how to handle it.

Looking into her eyes took his breath away. She was opening herself at last, showing him what he'd done to her then, what he'd been doing to her every day since then. He saw again the enraged and wounded young woman who had screamed "I hate you!" outside an FBI conference room. That day, he'd not known her well enough to see what she was showing him, but he knew her better now. The confusion, the pain, the heartbreak, it was all right there, and always had been.

"That's why you were so angry," he gasped, finally understanding that cataclysmic fight that had torn them apart for a year. When Brennan got scared she turned to either anger or flight as a defense. That day, she'd used both.

"You made me feel so much," she admitted fearfully, "and I was so wrong about you. It hurt me, _you hurt me_, but I couldn't stop feeling it. I couldn't stop thinking about you. I couldn't stop longing for you even though I knew it was just a chemical delusion and the only thing you wanted was sex. I was so wary of you and what you made me feel, the way it short-circuited logic and reason. I couldn't shut it off. I tried so hard to shut it off."

"You wouldn't speak to me," he realized, " because you were afraid of me?"

"I didn't understand why you kept chasing me, why you kept trying to get me to work with you. I didn't understand anything."

"Bones, I chased you because I wanted you. You were so beautiful and exciting, so brilliant and unpredictable. But you confused me. One minute you were offering yourself and giving me the most mind-blowing kiss I've ever had, and the next minute you ran away. You were so angry and I didn't know _why_. I didn't know what was going on."

Everything looked different now, every interaction between them during their first months as partners took a new meaning. Her incessant anger and defensiveness, the way she'd adamantly refused to speak to him until he'd forced her with an arrest at the airport. The way she'd been so subdued every time he snarked at her about her lack of social graces. Early on he'd snarled at her, _"You're no good with people, there's no use being offended by the fact."_ And she'd shrunk back into her seat as if he'd slapped her.

But she'd been so aggravating back then! Obtuse. Yes, he'd looked that word up in a thesaurus just so he could know what he was dealing with when Brennan got particularly vague or difficult. And oh, she was stubborn. Resistant. Over-the-top arrogant. But well worth the trouble once he'd finally found a way back into her good graces.

"When I finally got you to talk to me again, I was so relieved that I settled for just being able to work with you," he concluded.

But she wasn't finished explaining. There was more to tell, more evidence to show him that she knew the truth.

"Every time you told me I was bad with people reminded me I was wrong about you. That my feelings were wrong and I couldn't trust them. Every time you got mad at me for stating my opinion about religion or sex showed me how incompatible we are and that I annoyed you. And every time I tried to show you what I was feeling, you didn't even notice. I had to remind myself again that you didn't want me."

Guilt washed over his features, the consequence of detecting more hurt from those early sparring matches than he'd realized. He remembered all those arguments between them in their earliest days, all the times he'd hissed at her that her social skills sucked. The times she'd embarrassed him in front of military or police, priests or parents, and he'd lashed out at her when most of the time _he_ was the one offended, not them. All the times he'd tried to shut her up, hustling her out of the way as if her thoughts and opinions reflected badly on him. "Bones, I'm so sorry. I had no idea our disagreements were doing that to you. I'm sorry you thought I didn't want you."

"I knew you didn't want to be with me, Booth. You proved it to me."

"I—" That threw him. Booth paused, thoroughly confused. "How? How do you think I proved I didn't want you?"

"Because of what you didn't do. You wouldn't go against FBI regulations for me. You said we couldn't date because the FBI forbade fraternization between agents and consultants."

"Yes," he confirmed. "That's still the rule."

"But that didn't stop you from dating Cam, who was also a consultant."

Her words slammed into him, starkly outlining what she'd perceived when she discovered his relationship with her boss three years ago.

"Were you lying to me about the rules, Booth? You just didn't want to hurt my feelings?"

Shocked again, he could only sputter an unthinking denial. "No! No. I knew I wasn't supposed to be dating Cam. That's why we hid our relationship, because it wasn't allowed." And because he'd known even then how it would hurt Brennan that he was dating her boss, the woman who had nearly fired her. Hearing the second layer of pain in how she'd interpreted his relationship with Cam, he felt another layer of unease. Brennan was building a case against him and he found himself in the position of scrambling for a rebuttal. There wasn't one for this.

"You were willing to break the rules for Cam, but not for me. You've never broken the rules for me, not even when it was important. I had to spend two weeks thinking you were dead because you wouldn't break protocol for me."

For years, Brennan had sworn that hearts couldn't break, they could only be crushed. Since meeting Booth, she knew exactly what a heart-crushing felt like, exactly the way it felt to have a weight press down inside her ribs until it squeezed all of the air and blood out of her vital organs. She'd been living with that pain every day for years.

The pain of misjudging him and finding she'd fallen prey to false hopes and her own deluded heart. The pain of forcing herself to acknowledge he only wanted her for what she could do for his career. The pain of deciding she would take the professional partnership if that was all she could have. The pain of watching him with other women, knowing he would never want her that way. The pain of losing him and realizing that, despite everything, she loved him. The pain of knowing she didn't matter enough to be told he wasn't really dead. The nightmare of him telling her he loved her when she knew it wasn't real. The pain she had felt at each of those times had accumulated into a critical mass, constricting her chest and throat so tightly she almost couldn't breathe.

"Bones—"

She cut him off again, needing him to understand how hurt she was, and how confused. "You told me that there was a line, that people who worked together facing dangerous situations couldn't be romantically involved. You told me that was why you broke up with Cam. You made sure I understood we could never be together because of our jobs."

"I know, I remember." He didn't look happy with the reminder, nor with the conclusions she couldn't help but draw. At the time, still reeling from Epps's near miss with both Cam and Brennan, Booth had thought he was protecting them. Before he could even begin to articulate that, she was pulling out her conclusion, finishing this phase of her argument and preparing the next one. Because, he knew with an increasing sense of dread, there was more coming.

"All this time, I knew you didn't want me because if you'd wanted me, you'd have said something. You would have ignored the FBI rules for me, like you did for Cam." How could he not see the message his actions sent? He'd broken those rules to be with Cam, so the fact that he wouldn't break them for Brennan gave her all the evidence she'd needed to keep her feelings in check. By his inaction he'd showed her that he wanted to be partners and friends but nothing more, and she would take the small piece of him that he let her have.

They could work together.

She'd forced him to take her into the field just so she could be with him in the only way he would allow. He'd thought she just wanted to learn, to see what he did, and she'd never corrected him on his mistaken assumption, partly because there was some truth in it. She wanted to learn how to read people so she could learn how to read _him_.

Brennan had buried everything she felt for him right from the beginning. It had gotten harder over the years. Somehow a friendship had grown as he'd bullied his way ever deeper into her life. Booth had pushed his way in until her attachment to him had grown to the point of complete dependency, to the point where she knew she couldn't live without Booth. And yet, certain that he didn't feel the same way because actions speak louder than words, she'd kept holding the line he'd drawn between them, and had braced herself for a life lived alongside but never fully with him.

"I did want you," he corrected. "I thought you were the one who didn't want _me_." She'd been so good at hiding her truth from him, he'd never realized just how much she'd been hurt because of his cowardice. Over and over again, every moment when he could have acted but didn't, or could have kissed her but turned away, or could have declared his feelings but instead stayed silent, simply reaffirmed to her that he didn't have anything to declare.

But surely he couldn't take all the blame. Brennan had hidden her feelings, too. She kept her thoughts concealed just as he had. During any debate about love or romance, she'd sharply dismissed the power of emotions, of love, of marriage. "Love is a chemical delusion." "Marriage is an antiquated ritual." "An intellectually rigorous person would never get married!" She'd said all that and more. Passionately.

Booth pressed his hand over his eyes, trying to orient himself in this history she was sharing with him. Of course he hadn't said anything—she hadn't exactly laid out the welcome mat for declarations of love. Given all the dissuasive messages she'd sent his way, could she blame him for keeping quiet?

"You told me we couldn't," she insisted, still caught up in confusion and doubt, in the pain she'd carried with her silently for all these years. "Your actions showed me you wouldn't. You didn't want any romantic entanglements with your partner, so I respected that. You knew best because you were the heart person and I'm no good with people. I've only been doing what you wanted."

"It wasn't what I wanted," he countered bitterly. "It was the FBI's rules."

"Rules that suddenly no longer matter?" she asked pointedly. "All these years you said nothing, so what has changed?"

She knew what had changed: she'd put the idea in his head. It was her fault he thought he loved her, her fault he was pushing for more when the evidence showed he'd never wanted it before. If she let him push and his feelings changed (she knew they would, the doctors had assured her of this), then she would lose him completely when he realized his love wasn't real.

The only hope was pushing him back into place, reminding him of the rules.

Booth didn't know where they were headed. Sensing her question was a pivotal one, he paused again to consider his answer. So far this conversation had not gone at all the way he'd expected, his partner's shocking disclosures upending everything he'd thought he knew about her. The only constant where Brennan was concerned was her capacity to flummox him and leave him dizzy—even after five years together he could never predict what she would do or say next.

He chose his words carefully. "You said you wanted to believe I felt it, too, that night in the rain. Bones, I did feel it. I have been in love with you since the day we met."

"No." She shook her head, denying the words, refusing the tainted evidence he'd offered. "No, you can't keep changing the rules."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, now thoroughly bewildered.

"You told me that love at first sight only happens in the movies."

His mouth fell open. A throwaway comment made while angry, but naturally Brennan would remember it. She remembered everything, it's just who she was. He struggled to come up with a response that would negate one damaging, off-the-cuff remark. "That's not … I didn't mean…." _I didn't mean me?_ Right, he scolded himself. The horse is out of the barn on that one. Too late to take it back now.

She wasn't going to allow him to recant at this point. She demanded honesty, which meant he had to own what he'd said. No take-backs. No changies. And so when Brennan nailed him on that comment, he knew he had no defense.

"When you were angry about Jared and Padme, you said there was no such thing as love at first sight. You said you didn't believe in it. Now you're telling me that you loved _me_ at first sight, but your actions have shown otherwise. You're changing the rules, Booth. How can I trust you?"

She'd called him on this those many weeks ago, when he'd declared Jared couldn't possibly love Padme. He remembered how upset Brennan had been, how she'd claimed to have an upset stomach. Her hesitant questioning of his logic, her fear that he'd abandoned his entire belief system about love. After getting Brennan to finally believe in love, he'd changed his definitions and left her questioning hers.

That's when he understood, the damage had been done weeks ago. Years ago.

He'd changed his mind. He'd changed the rules. He'd changed their relationship.

Cam's warning to Booth from months ago floated back through his mind. _"If you crack that shell and then change your mind, she'll die of loneliness before she ever trusts anyone again…."_

He staggered from the insight, seeing that he'd cracked Brennan's shell that first day they'd met. It wasn't he who had fallen in love at first sight, _she_ had. But ever since then, he'd unwittingly undermined her faith in him, in her feelings, in everything he'd worked to build between them over the years. She didn't believe he loved her, and every bit of evidence she'd gathered had only seemed to prove that she was correct.

_Oh, God, I did this to her,_ he mourned silently. All this time he'd been blaming her parents, her past, her uncompromising rationality, never dreaming that he'd played his own starring role in the insecurities that had held her back.

~Q~

Author's Note: I'm not trying to be hard on Booth, but he is hearing a different perspective.

We are all at the mercy of our perceptions, of what we see and what we think motivates other people. Brennan is explaining what she's seen over the years. Is she right? Is she wrong? How is Booth going to react?


	6. The String Unraveled

Standard Disclaimer: I don't own anything other than my musings. I am once again borrowing a few lines from the writers of Bones in hopes of fleshing out the thoughts behind the line.

Author's Note: I'm posting this a bit early because I'm going to be gone the rest of the day and don't want to leave people hanging.

So...

Brennan has dropped a couple of bombshells and made a compelling argument. That doesn't mean she's correct, however, and Booth isn't one to give up easily. That's one of the things we love about him.

**Chapter 6 – The String Unraveled**

Seeing the mess they'd carelessly made with their silences and secrets, Booth could only think of one way to move forward. If he could just get her to trust him now, maybe they could leave the past behind. He loved her, and now that he knew for certain she loved him also, previous misunderstandings needn't stand in their way.

He reached for her hand and lifted her to her feet. He tried to pull her closer despite her dragging feet. "Please believe that I love you. You can question my actions from years ago, but believe that what I feel for you _today_ is love. I can't imagine being with anyone but you. This last week without you has been miserable."

"It's not real. It's not." She shook her head and tried to swallow down the sudden thickness that had begun squeezing her throat closed. Her eyes burned and her head ached. This quagmire they found themselves in was due to her error in judgment, her selfish indulgence in fantasy, but she trying to lead them both out of it with their partnership intact.

Brennan was starting to see that he wasn't going to give up. Ordinarily, that would have pleased her, watching the alpha male conquer whatever quest he embarked upon. She had always admired Booth's passion and intensity, the way he pursued every goal he'd set for himself. This time, however, his persistence was dangerous. It was going to burn them.

Slipping his hand against her cheek, he brought her mouth to his again and brushed his lips over hers tenderly. "This is real, Bones. We're so good together. Feel what you do to me." He placed the hand he held against his chest, pressing it hard enough for her to feel the pulse beating beneath his flesh and bones.

She couldn't resist him when he touched her like this. Did he know that? Brennan struggled against the molten heat pouring through her limbs, the overwhelming longing he could ignite so easily with just one kiss. "Please, don't," she entreated. "I can't think." And she needed to think—she needed to think fast.

"Stop thinking," he growled, revealing that yes, indeed, he did know what he could do to her. "_Feel_, Temperance. Feel that I love you. Believe that I have loved you for years. I only held back because I thought you didn't."

He slanted his mouth against hers, taking her under with deliberate intent. Sparing no mercy, he moved his lips and tongue in a teasing dance until she moaned and her knees buckled. He caught her, lifted his head and found the tender skin behind her ear, nipping it gently with his teeth and smiling at the shivers he'd started. She groaned again at the contact, her head falling back and eyes closing for just one moment. Just a single minute to enjoy the feeling before she had to make it end. Booth ran his hand down her back until he reached her hip and, pulling her fully against him, he ground his desire into her.

"How can you think I don't want you?" he muttered against her jaw. "I've never wanted anyone the way I want you."

_But that isn't true, is it?_ The tormenting thought stabbed through the sweet sensations he evoked and recalled her sharply to where they were. To what was at stake. To what was real and what wasn't.

"Booth, no. No!" Brennan went to work pulling herself away, shocked to see how close he could bring her to the edge of mindlessness, of losing her self control and letting them both fall into chaos. This torrent of passion would sweep them both under. It would feel so good now, but the pain later would destroy her. It would destroy him, too.

Recognizing she was running perilously close to surrender, she struggled free of his grasp, fighting herself and him, fighting alone to save them both. "I can't. We can't."

"Bones." He started towards her but she backed away like a skittish cat, her eyes huge and her breaths coming in panicked bursts. "What are you afraid of?"

"I don't want our partnership to end."

Her desperation tugged at his heart even as it bewildered him. "It won't," he tried to reassure her.

"It will," she nearly wailed. "When it wears off, when you realize it isn't real."

"What isn't real?" He insisted, so confused he was starting to question his partner's sanity. She'd been saying this all evening and he started to understand it was the key to everything.

The pain had intensified in her eyes as she pointed out the other truth he'd left her with over the years. "I understood why you didn't want me, Booth. You made it clear I'm not the kind of woman you want. I'm not blonde, I'm not a lawyer. I'm awkward and tactless. I don't care about sports. I don't want children or marriage. I don't believe in God. I embarrass you and drive you crazy."

"I love you," he persisted. "I would give up everything to be with you."

"You love a fantasy. I can't love you the way that you want. I can't be the kind of woman you want me to be. I know who I am, I know my own limitations, but I think you've forgotten. You still want the dream, the wife and mother and white picket fences and you think that's me. But it's not. When I've disappointed you over and over, and it ends, what then?"

"That's not going to happen!"

"You're not being realistic, Booth." Her voice shook. "I envy your ability to substitute optimism for practicality."

"Please, just give us a chance."

"No!" Brennan pulled herself further away, her composure slipping. "Despite everything, you mean so much to me. You're my best friend. I can't … take chances like that. I can't lose you. Why are you doing this to me? You say you know me, why can't you see that I can't take risks like this. I have to be sure."

She'd said that on Monday night. _"I am not a gambler. I'm a scientist. I have to be sure."_

Scrambling to keep following her train of thought, Booth shook his head as if it would help him understand her better. "What aren't you sure of?"

"You don't love me, Booth. You love _her_." Her eyes were shining more brightly than usual, threatening rain.

"Who." It was not a question, it was a demand.

_The me I wish I could be,_ Brennan admitted to herself. _The me I wrote about, the us I allowed myself to imagine._ But she couldn't bring herself to say it out loud, to confess what she'd longed for when she had finally faced never having it. Love and marriage and the baby carriage, none of that was meant for Temperance Brennan. It was meant for that other self, the idealized self. She whispered the name that had haunted them both for months. "Bren."

Adrenaline shot through his system, a feeling of edginess as he finally got to the heart of the matter. "That was just a dream, Bones. I know it wasn't real."

"You weren't in love with me before then."

Brennan saw his mouth open to protest, his entire body tensing in denial. He didn't accept her statement—he was going to demand more evidence, more proof. Though she'd been hoping she could avoid this truth, she saw the time had come to confess her part in this mess. To put the blame where it belonged.

"It's my fault you got confused. It was my story. I wrote it, all of it. I wrote about _us_, about what I wanted us to be."

Her words dropped into the empty space between them as if she'd thrown a heavy dictionary onto a cement floor. A loud slam! And then the eerie silence as the impact registered.

His brow furrowed as he struggled to understand what she was saying. He remembered the dream quite vividly still, but all along he'd known it was his own imagination placing a veneer over her story. He was the one who had imagined Brennan as the wife, and as far as he was concerned, there was only one reason that would explain how his mind had interpreted her words. He loved her and wanted that kind of life with her.

From her upset state, he suddenly realized she was interpreting it all very differently. "You think I didn't love you before the coma?" he finally guessed. "You think I was tricked by your story?"

She nodded, relieved that he was finally understanding her. His actions, his line, and MRI scans of his changed brain activity were all the evidence she'd needed to hold his line firmly for him, even if he was suddenly confused enough to wander across it. She had to make him see why 'taking a chance' on an illusion would shatter them both.

Slowly, he walked the few steps that separated them and pulled her gently closer once more. "I loved you long before that damn tumor."

Hearing his words made the tears spill out of her rain-filled eyes. More than anything, she wanted to just let him be right. But lying to herself was something Brennan had never done; and lying to Booth was something she'd vowed never to do. As much as it hurt she had to keep after the truth, had to make him understand.

"You didn't," she insisted. "The MRIs, Booth. The evidence is irrefutable."

"You saw those?" He was going to kill Sweets. It was all starting to look like a twisted game the psychologist was playing. Why had Sweets shown those scans to Brennan?

Brennan saw his face darken in fury and, misunderstanding the source, quickly defended her violation of his medical privacy. "You crashed in the operating theater and then spent four days in a coma. Dr. Jersik showed me the scans because you asked me to be involved with the surgery. We were trying to ascertain if there was permanent damage and he needed my observations of your behavior from before the coma."

"Okay, fine," he said brusquely. "What evidence is in my MRIs?"

"You fell in love with me after the surgery. When I was reading my story out loud."

He huffed out an angry retort. "I don't care about what some damn machine sees happening inside my head. I know what I feel!"

Her eyes held his in apology, in sympathy, in tears of remorse. "Booth, hormones are very powerful; they originate inside the brain in response to stimuli from our environment. I know it feels real to you now, but it's an artifact of your coma, the stimulus of hearing me read my book to you. I … I wrote about love. About making love. About being in love with you. Somehow it affected you—I had no idea you could hear me on that level. I didn't mean to do that to you, to change your mind without your consent. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"No. Don't apologize. Now that I know what you really feel, don't take it back."

"I'm not taking it back. I know that I can't." But she would if she could. If Brennan had known then the tempest her story would unleash, she never would have read one word of her story to him. She wouldn't have dared to write it.

They stood silently, near enough to feel mutual streams of warmth, and yet held slightly apart by apprehension.

"You should have told me," he finally said quietly. "How you felt."

"I didn't want you to know. I never meant for you to have to carry this burden." Her eyes fell away from his as she felt the seismic shifting that was taking place between them. They couldn't go forward and they couldn't go back. Everything between them lay crumbled and broken.

"What burden?"

"Knowing I love you when you don't feel that way about me."

He'd never heard her sounding so broken. "Bones…."

"Do you understand, now? We can't risk everything for a dream. We can't."

"I loved you…" he trailed off as all the evidence she'd presented him with struck home unexpectedly.

Sometimes, during an investigation or interrogation, things would click. Just a snap! and he would see something he hadn't seen before. A revelation, an epiphany, a shift in paradigm. (He'd been hanging out with squints too long if he was using words like paradigm, even if only in his head.)

But a paradigm shift is exactly what had happened in that moment.

Because Brennan wasn't the only one who had cautioned him to be sure his love was real: Cam had, also. Brennan wasn't the only one who had shown him the MRI scans and told him what they meant. And if Brennan saw in them the same thing Sweets saw in them, and yet she and Sweets had never spoken to each other about the MRIs…. Though words like paradigm and paradox weren't part of his working vocabulary, Booth knew what those words meant.

He was facing a paradox right at that moment, the sudden sweeping recognition that his gut was speaking … and it was telling him that his gut instincts might be all wrong. That everything he remembered was questionable. He'd known for months that his memories were occasionally spotty, but until this very moment he hadn't considered the implications. When your memories are unreliable, you can't rely upon them. They might be leading you astray.

That is what she was trying to tell him, it was in the testimony Brennan had been giving him all evening. He was remembering a history and a love that might not exist. It might not be real.

Brennan didn't think it was real.

He shuddered in the aftershocks, stunned and doubting himself. In that terrible moment he finally found himself understanding Sweets's warning. _"Your feelings of love are temporary and will fade over time."_ All the little things that had seemed wrong or off-kilter over the last few months whipped through his mind, especially his newly relaxed approach to clowns. Finally he had a context for all of the haunted, bittersweet gazes Brennan had been giving him over the last few months as he'd begun courting her, touching her more, and had unknowingly squeezed her heart a little harder each time.

"You didn't." She sounded near tears again. "It's okay, I understood."

Confusion and pain circled closer, pulling them both apart at the seams. Brennan watched Booth unravel and knew she was the cause. She didn't have an open heart. If she'd have been brave enough, she might have told him how she felt when he was conscious to hear it. She might have gambled, taken the risk that he would say no. Instead, she'd told him in his sleep and violated him in the worst way possible. _You're the one who needs protecting. From me._

"I love you now," he tried one final time, knowing already that she'd proved her case with her usual devastating diligence.

The silence between them grew heavy with hopelessness. His, because he found he could no longer trust his mind or his heart. Hers, because in telling him the truth she'd only hurt him further. She knew she had shaken him to his very foundations, shattered his very sense of self. We are our memories and Booth's had just been violently stripped away.

"We were friends. We can still be partners. Please, Booth, if you love me at all then please let this go. Let the dream go."

Defeat bowed his shoulders when she whispered her final plea.

He knew his memory had been faulty all along, but hers never was. Brennan remembered everything, perfectly. If one of them was wrong, it had to be him…. Trusting her judgment was all he had left to cling to, because Brennan remembered, and Brennan knew him, and Brennan didn't lie.

Booth backed away, exhausted, bewildered, lost. "Okay. I … uh … I gotta get going. We'll just … forget this happened. That's what you want, right?"

She bit her lip, hating the pain she'd caused. It wasn't what she wanted, but what she said was, "It's what's best for us."

"Yeah. Right." Booth pushed his hand through his hair. "I guess it's good one of us can be rational."

On that final, bitter note, he turned and walked out.

~Q~

Author's Note: I hate this just as much as you do, but since my goal was to explain...

Originally this story had taken a different direction, but as I was reviewing Booth's side of things, I hit upon the the central premise of this chapter. Those MRIs, what were they telling us? If Brennan was involved with Booth's medical care enough to observe his surgery, then the doctor probably would have shown them to her. What would those MRIs mean to Brennan? And what would do to Booth if he suddenly had to question his own reality...?


	7. Question Everything

Disclaimer: I don't own anything having to do with Bones. Sadly.

Author's Note: I cringed when I uploaded the previous chapter. I was very afraid you all would hate me. But, I made you all a promise that I had some explanations to give, and a story that I would keep telling until it's finished.

**Chapter 7 – Question Everything**

"What are you doing here alone? Where's Brennan?"

At eight o'clock on a Friday night, Seeley Booth had plugged himself into the corner of the bar at Founding Fathers and was nursing his fourth dose of Glenfiddich Single Malt Whiskey. He looked sideways as a woman slid gracefully into the empty stool on his right and shrugged an answer to her question.

"You didn't talk to her yet?" Cam raised a curious brow.

"No, we talked."

She didn't mistake the sharp, astringent tone his voice had taken on. "I take it the conversation didn't go well."

He tossed back the scotch and slapped the glass back on the counter. "Define 'well.'"

Her purse found a place on the bar. "Well, you're clearly here alone. Unhappy. I'd say that suggests your conversation with Brennan did not result in shared romantic bliss."

"Nope," he agreed tightly. Chancing another glance at her, he finally asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm meeting a friend for drinks." Cam left her answer deliberately vague, knowing he wasn't going to press for details.

Booth nodded, giving her a faint, encouraging smile. She might be on a date; she might be following up an anonymous tip from the Jeffersonian. He wasn't sure and decided he desired the company badly enough not to question how she'd come to be there just then. It was enough that she was there. The two remained quietly contemplative for several minutes.

But images and turmoil roiled through his brain, not dulled despite the alcohol he'd begun consuming as soon as he sat down. He just wanted to stop thinking, to stop hearing his partner's pain-laced truths rattling around in the empty storage vaults of his mind. Empty, because he'd tossed out all the memories of them as so much useless fiction when what he needed was facts. Brennan had given him her facts, now his to use or discard. He had no facts of his own to contribute.

What he knew now boiled down to this: he didn't know her at all. He'd missed every sign and signal. He'd been sure he knew her better than she knew herself and wasn't that just the height of arrogance? To think we can really know someone else. It's all false pride—we only know what they let us know.

"How did you know she wasn't going to agree to a relationship," he asked abruptly, unable to keep his questions inside any longer. What else did Cam know? What else had he missed or misunderstood? "Did she tell you?"

"She didn't tell me anything, really. Just a code word we use at the lab to explain 'it's complicated' without having to actually explain. String Theory."

Booth sat perfectly still, absorbing what Cam had told him earlier that afternoon, and now. "She mentions string and that means something to you. I guess that just goes to show you know her better than I do."

That most certainly was not the truth, Cam knew. No one knew Brennan better than Booth. Something had happened to make him say something so utterly untrue, and it was a definite turn for the worse. The despair rolling off him in waves had her worried. She regarded him closely with her dark, knowing eyes. "What's going on, Seeley."

"Don't call me Seeley." It sounded tired, deflated. "At least I'm remembering that right. Aren't I?"

"Are you okay?" She was far too troubled to send back her standard retort on names.

"No, I'm not okay. I'm a screwed up mess."

Cam found herself without words for a moment. "You're scaring me a little."

"That makes two of us." Seeing her confused concern, he bit back a curse and sighed. "I don't know my own mind, apparently."

"Where is this coming from?"

He laughed bitterly. "You know where. Brain tumor, coma, lost memories. Me thinking I was married to Bones. Me thinking I'm in love with her. MRIs that prove I'm a mess."

The bartender had stopped by and inquired their preferences with a silently raised brow. Booth nodded shortly towards his empty glass. Cam told him, "Chardonnay," and returned her attention to her friend. "Tell me about … MRIs?"

"You know, brain scans. They took pictures of my brain, pictures that say I wasn't in love with her before the coma, but I was afterwards. Sweets showed them to me months ago and told me that what I was feeling wasn't real. That was around the same time you told me I was in love with her."

"Why are we talking about this now?" she asked gently.

"Bones saw them, too."

Confused, on the verge of furious, Cam asked, "Sweets showed your MRI's to Brennan?"

"No," Booth corrected, relieved to see he wasn't the only one who had jumped to that unpleasant and mercifully false conclusion. "My doctor did, when I was in the coma. She said it's proof."

"Proof?"

"That I don't really love her. She has known my memories were scrambled all along."

Cam sat back, startled into silence. She struggled to come up with even one word to express the perplexity this turn of events had rendered. All she managed to find was, "Wow."

Since that wasn't enough, Cam tried again. "I don't … wow."

And with that, she gave it up for a lost cause.

He chuckled without humor. "Bones, she's really good at proving a point."

"You're telling me Brennan proved you don't really … love her?"

"Yep." He lifted the next scotch that appeared in front of him in that moment and tossed half its contents back with casual desperation.

"With MRIs?"

"Actions, Cam. My not explaining a certain bottle of Tequila. My line. My relationship with you. My failure to tell her I was dead. A lot of things, all adding up over time. And the MRI, well, that was just the last nail in the coffin. It's all perfectly mapped out: a solid, airtight argument complete with physical evidence. Conviction is assured. Caroline would be dancing for joy if this were one of her cases."

"You believe this?"

He shook his head tiredly. "I didn't at first, but…."

"But what?"

When he looked her again, Cam saw a bleakness in Booth's eyes that had never been there before. "She's right. I swore to Gordon Gordon Wyatt and even to you that I would know if she loved me, that she clearly didn't because if she did, I would _know_. And you know what? I was wrong. Dead. Freaking. Wrong. She's been in love with me since the beginning."

Digesting that, Cam patted his arm sympathetically. "Okay, but being wrong about one thing shouldn't be enough to make you question whether you love her. Dr. Brennan is pretty skilled at hiding her feelings. Probably she didn't want you to know."

"No, she definitely didn't. She didn't want to burden me."

"Burden you?"

Gripping his glass a bit tighter than necessary, he shook his head tiredly. "She's sure I don't love her and didn't want me to feel guilty over that. 'Cause, it turns out there's nothing worse than being in love with someone and they don't love you back. Well, maybe one thing is worse: that's finding out that what you think is love is actually just a delusion."

"Booth, you're acting like you don't know your own mind."

"Exactly!" He finished off the rest of the scotch and waved his glass spasmodically. "Exactly, Cam. Here I am, proclaiming myself the reader of people, the expert on emotions, and I don't even notice my partner has been in love with me for years. How's that for … what's the word? Hubris."

"But…."

"But, what? Let's look at the evidence here. I forgot about my socks, or why I like my cocky belt buckle. I forgot whether I like brown sugar. I forgot how to tell if people are lying. I forgot that I hate cats and clowns. I forgot that I've never been in love enough with my partner to cross my line."

Cam shook her head. "It was complicated. FBI rules. That's what you told me."

"Yeah. Rules I broke for you, but not for her."

She looked up in surprise and guilt, suddenly seeing what Brennan must have realized. If there was one thing they knew for certain, it was that Temperance Brennan refused to accept any conclusion without proof. Evidence. Getting the motive was difficult for her but with Booth, Brennan was always particularly and keenly motivated—she would have been gathering evidence about him all along. Brennan, as the brilliant observer she was, would know things that no one else knew. And Brennan, as the keen scientist she was, would draw her conclusions from what she observed, just as any good scientist did.

His hollow voice disrupted the school of thoughts swimming in her head and sent them scattering. "All this time I've been telling myself she's the one who's screwed up, but it was me."

Brennan had drawn a conclusion that Booth didn't love her, and now Booth believed it. Tears stung Cam's eyes. "Don't do this to yourself. You do love her. We all can see it."

"Actions speak louder than words. My actions prove otherwise."

"No," she disagreed sharply. "I've seen what you're willing to do for her. I know you love her. You have loved her, for years."

Booth raised his hand to get the attention of the bartender. "It doesn't matter. Even if you're right—and I'm not so sure at this point—she has proved that my memory is shot to hell and that I've behaved inconsistently at best. She doubts me. She is sure I don't love her. She's absolutely sure and that's what counts."

"She doesn't trust you?"

"Not about this."

He let that rest for a moment. With a sigh, Booth added, "I don't trust me either, Cam. The love I think is real, is probably based on a book. Her book. She read her book to me about being in love and starting a family, and my MRI went from not-in-love to 'lit up like the Fourth of July.' Bang! Madly in love. She feels guilty for doing that to me. She's apologized."

Cam took a small sip of her Chardonnay, unable to think of anything else to do while he brooded. This was the String Theory, the mess Brennan couldn't explain. The risk she couldn't take.

As the bartender finished pouring out another scotch, Booth lifted his glass for another round. Drinking away the misery seemed his only option tonight. "What makes this the absolute worst is, I don't know if it's real or not. I mean, she might actually be right. Bones has a near perfect memory and mine … faulty. I gotta go with Bones on this because my memory has become Old Unreliable lately."

She had nothing to say against that. The entire situation had turned out mind-numbingly complicated. "I don't know what to tell you. Booth, what if she's wrong?"

"I can't prove it," he answered tiredly. "I can't fight her on this."

He fell silent a minute longer, then started again.

"What kills me, what's killing her, is that she loves me. You were right about that, Cam. She's holding herself back from me, for my own damn good, because she thinks she tricked me into thinking I'm in love with her. What the hell can I do about that? How can I win against that?"

"Oh, Seeley," she whispered. "Oh my God."

"It's hopeless. Even if you're right and I do love her."

"You do, Seeley."

He slammed his hand down on the bar. "I do love her. I'm sure I do. I can _feel_ it. But she begged me to give up the dream, to give her up. For my own good. And because I love her, that's what I have to do."

"You're giving up?"

"What choice do I have? She's scared and I can't do that to her, keep pushing her when I don't have anything that can prove her wrong. I've got nothing but feelings that can't be trusted. I can't live without her. And I promised her I would never leave her. So, you know, we're partners. Still partners. That's what we are."

Cam swiped a tear away, feeling nearly as crushed as she was sure both partners were feeling. She knew it was only going to get worse from this point. Had they thought this through? Almost dreading the ill-conceived answer she expected, Cam ventured to ask, "How is that going to work?"

"We do what we've been doing all along. I redraw the line and she goes on pretending she doesn't love me, waiting for the day when I snap out of my book-induced delusion and remember that I never loved her. That's what we're going to do."

~Q~

Author's Note: If you recall, in my note at the end of the first chapter, I made you two promises. I would explain why Brennan said no. And I would explain why Booth didn't fight for her.

Because of the coma, Booth lost his confidence in himself, in his memories, and in his instincts. He can't trust his 'gut.' Without that faith in himself, it's like he's metaphorically deaf, depending on Brennan's intelligence and science to inform him. And she's trying … but they are two parts of a whole. Without Booth's instincts about feelings and people to balance her knowledge of facts and natural processes, she's metaphorically blind. They're spinning off balance and out of control. Their center cannot hold.

That is the tragedy that I saw unfold in the 100th episode.

We're not quite done yet. I promise you, you will know when the story is over.


	8. Taking Chances

I hereby disclaim any and all notions of ownership with regard to the characters, plotlines or other workings of Bones.

Author's Note: I really hate scaring you, my dear readers. But at the same time, I don't want to reassure you either. I don't want to spoil the journey unfolding here. There's a difficult balance between leaving you in despair, giving you hope, and giving away too much. Better I just not say anything and let you find out for yourselves.

Read on...

**Chapter 8 – Taking Chances**

Cam waited until Monday morning to confront the last player in the previous week's drama. She entered the Hoover building and stormed into Sweets's office just as quickly as it took her to fly up three flights of stairs and round two corners. She let the door hit the wall with a smack! and barely resisted the impulse to slam it shut with equal force.

Sweets startled and dropped the pen he was holding. "Dr. Saroyan! What…?"

"What game are you playing?" she demanded with an icy calm that belied just how ticked off she really felt.

"Game?"

"You showed him MRI's and told him he wasn't really in love with her, then you wrote a book and claimed the opposite."

Sweets gaped at her blankly.

Cam was just getting started. "Then you told him to gamble? A recovering gambler. How could you be so irresponsible with one of your patients? With both of them!"

"I can't discuss private sessions with you," Sweets began.

"Save it! Booth already filled me in on your fantastic 'advice' and I'm here to point out the fall-out because you clearly haven't got a clue."

Sweets looked unnerved at Cam's vehemence. "He said something to her?"

"Did you really think he wouldn't?"

"To be honest, I wasn't sure he would."

"Well he did and it didn't go well." She glared at him, finally realizing she had nothing left to say because it takes two to argue. And Sweets wasn't holding up his end.

The young man sighed. "I expected that."

"What?!"

"Believe it or not, I know what I'm doing."

"You just derailed a five-year relationship. They're **_broken_**!"

Sweets stood up, using his height to advantage because otherwise Camille Saroyan could be pretty intimidating despite her petite size. "I took a calculated risk, and before you go getting too worked up, I think it's going to be okay."

Arms crossed and eyes narrowed, Cam announced the current state of affairs. "Booth and Brennan haven't spoken to each other in days. She's miserable and he's pretty much questioning his sanity. How is that okay?"

"The darkest hour is just before dawn," Sweets answered cryptically.

"What does that mean?" she demanded, borrowing the phrase from Brennan.

"It means they were both too complacent. They were stalled, in a rut, coasting, drifting. Pick a metaphor. Someone had to knock them off balance so they could finally see where they are and do something about it. It's going to be rough, at first, but I'm sure this is what they needed."

"What if you're wrong," she gasped. "What if you've screwed them up completely? They weren't ready for this!"

Sweets gestured for her to take one of the seats in front of his desk. He stepped around and took the other. "Look, I really can't break confidentiality."

"You also can't mess with people's lives. They're not your personal game pieces. This was cruel."

"Give me some credit," he snapped. "I care about them and I certainly don't want either one of them to suffer. I'm not the only psychologist involved with their case, and I did not make a unilateral decision. There is a … consensus … that it's time for them to confront certain issues."

Cam's eyes widened in disbelief. "A consensus? What, you're on a committee?"

"Okay, look. I shouldn't tell you this but I can see you're not letting me off the hook unless I justify my decision to you. They're both questioning their history, okay? They have to come to terms with their past and what it means for their future. _They_ have to do it, they have to work through it together. What I did was kick the problem out of the closet where they've been ignoring it. I made sure they tripped over it."

"People break bones when they trip over things," Cam sputtered.

"Or, they get a bruise and realize they shouldn't leave their mess out in the hall. Tripping motivates them to pick it up and put it away," he countered coolly. "I'm just giving them the opportunity to see they've got a problem they need to deal with. That's all. The rest is up to them."

"I don't think you realize how big the problem is," she said tightly. "It's not something you trip over, it's more like running into a brick wall at sixty miles per hour."

Sweets held her gaze, his face showing remarkable poise despite his youth. "Possibly I'm one of the only people who actually does understand how big the issue is. They both have some trust issues to work through. And that's all I am at liberty to discuss."

Cam shook her head, feeling that he was not dealing with all of the facts. "It's not just trust, it's a question of reality!"

He surprised her then by agreeing quietly. "I know, Dr. Saroyan. Believe me, I know. They have to get past this, there's no other way."

He knew? Cam looked him over carefully, noting the seriousness in his eyes and the tense set of his jaw. "You know what I'm talking about?"

Sweets nodded, a little sad but very confident. "Trusting Agent Booth's memories and feelings is one of the issues they have to work through. Pushing him was the only way to get that process started."

"You sound sure." She sounded shaky.

"I have faith in them. They'll work it out. We just need to give them the time and space to do it."

"What if you're wrong, Dr. Sweets?" Her eyes held a note of pleading that was exceptionally rare in a woman as jaded as Dr. Saroyan.

"I'm not wrong. They're going to be okay."

"How do you know?"

He shrugged, smiled weakly. "Every epic love story has a happy ending."

Cam glared at him because _that_ was nothing to hang one's hopes upon. Writers couldn't be relied upon to get things right. With a huff, she stood up. "Well, that depends on the writer, doesn't it. Ever hear of Romeo and Juliet?"

His face fell. "Well, I was thinking more along the lines of Benedict and Beatrice. Same writer. Couple starts out fighting, swears they'll never get together, but they find themselves falling in love anyway. And they do end up together. Happy ending."

She leaned into his space. "If this doesn't end well, Booth won't get a chance to shoot you. I'll take care of it myself."

"You don't have a gun," he hoped.

"Former cop, remember?" She took the liberty of slamming the door on her way out.

~Q~

Monday morning found Temperance Brennan hard at work in the quietest, most private place she knew. She located the box belonging to an unidentified female recovered from a disturbed Civil War era grave and took it to the examination table. Being in Limbo herself, she felt an inexplicable kinship with the lost souls waiting here for peace and resolution.

_I'm waxing poetic_, she sighed inwardly, wondering where these maudlin thoughts were coming from. It was only waiting that she faced, not an eternal banishment to the place of forsaken souls.

Her last, devastating conversation with Booth was hanging around her in heavy, clanking chains. She'd been trying to force it all out of her mind for the last two days, tried to remind herself why she'd argued so hard and so passionately against the very thing she wanted.

_I'm doing this for him_, she thought firmly. _I'm doing this for us_. And that was it; there was no useful purpose on dwelling over the past. All she could do was wait and observe what unfolded next. She had to trust him, that his lion heart would do what needed to be done.

Sliding off the lid, her gaze expertly roamed over the contents of the storage bin, taking in still slightly dusty bones and a few artifacts that had come in with the remains. She lifted out the inventory sheet, retrieved the archeologist's report, map and photos, and set them all aside. Next came the bones, each one gently removed to the exam table and placed into position. As she set each one down, she glanced at the inventory sheet and checked it off, confirmation that everything was there and nothing had gone missing.

The pelvis floated delicately between her palms, her eyes drawn helplessly to the pubis. Dorsal pitting of the pubis adjacent to the pubic symphysis strongly suggested this woman's bones had undergone trauma related to childbirth. Brennan set the pelvis down, wondering if her own would ever bear marks like this. Wondering how it had come to this, that she wanted it to. We all fall prey to our biology it seems, even geniuses.

She deliberately pushed those thoughts away, centering every milligram of her concentration on the woman in the box. Whoever she was, she deserved Brennan's undivided devotion, at least until she was given back her name. Each bone from the bin found its place on the table, until the body lay in roughly anatomical order.

The bones had been carefully picked free of dried, clinging tissue, then swept clean using soft-bristled brushes. The soft tissue and sediment were gathered into separate specimen jars, a gift for Hodgins and Cam. The skull lay at the top, waiting for Angela's expertise if Brennan was unable to match the remains to local burial records. This was an archeological case, one of the Jeffersonian's typical functions being to help identify and preserve historical sites. The forgotten graveyard had been discovered by accident when a construction project had literally dug it up. There would be no court proceedings, but still this woman would be ensured her little footnote in history. Proof that she'd existed.

Reaching for the unknown woman's mandible, she gently ran a finger across the mental eminence, the delicate slope of her chin. If she closed her eyes, Brennan could envision Booth's chin as well, the sharper peak of bone that she knew lay under his skin and signaled his robust masculinity. This woman's jaw had been smoothly feminine, probably she'd been considered beautiful.

Brennan worked silently, letting the enclosing walls of drawers and remains wrap around her. There were times when she thought being here must feel a little like the way Booth felt in a cathedral. On the day he'd taken her with him to Mass, she'd gazed over at him and noticed the look of peace on his face. She knew that peace herself only when she stood here in "Limbo"—_modular bone storage_, she reminded herself firmly—and let the silence reign.

Her nerves were frayed almost to breaking, if the evidence of her shaking hands was anything to go by. For the last week she'd found it difficult to sleep, to eat, to relax. Stress and worry ordinarily didn't impact Brennan much—she thrived on pressure and always kept her equanimity no matter how intense the circumstances. But this situation with Booth, the emotional chaos, was not something that she could shove into a compartment and walk away from.

Truth be told, she was terrified.

She wasn't sure she'd done the right thing.

Arguing him out of a relationship based on a faulty scaffold had seemed the only way to protect them both, but she couldn't deny that it hurt to watch him give up. That she'd wanted him to keep fighting, to prove her wrong. Saying no to her deepest wish was the hardest trial she'd ever faced. She was scared that she'd made a mistake.

But, however much it hurt, she'd known he would give up. He'd been holding back, thinking he was protecting her, yet in truth she knew he was afraid also. He didn't trust himself. She knew that. And unless he did, unless he could put himself wholly in, there was no hope that it could last between them. They would break if either of them wasn't sure.

Brennan had told Booth she wasn't a gambler, but that didn't mean she didn't know how to do it. Her brief run of success in Vegas had taught her about risk and odds, beginner's luck, and understanding the rules of a game before you approach the table. Saying no to Booth was the biggest gamble of her life—she was risking it all that he would recover his sense of self and finally be ready to make the offer she was hoping he would still want to make.

She'd had months to prepare, had braced herself for the fight as soon as she realized what had happened. Despite her weeks of careful thought, however, all that preparation had almost been lost to her surprise when he'd unexpectedly made his move weeks later than anticipated. All that preparation and she'd still been caught off guard, stammering and shaken like a first-year grad student.

Brennan had spent the following days lashing herself for her utter failure and looking for a way to set things straight. If Brennan believed in God, she might be tempted to thank Him—metaphorically—for sending Booth into her office on Friday and providing a second window of opportunity to talk to him, to lay out the argument and see which way he would go.

Everything depended on him, on the choice he made next.

_"I wanted it to start out right between us."_ That's what she'd confessed to him, and she meant it. Before she could believe Booth truly loved her, she had to be sure it was coming from his heart and not his head.

So she had studied the players, checked the rules and placed her wager. She risked all of her dreams on faith in her partner, that he would find himself and find his way back to her. That she could manage to hold on to hope and wait while he searched for his truth. That when they finally came together he would be sure and she would know he was in it to stay.

~Q~

* * *

Author's Note:

For the record, Brennan is **_not_** working with Sweets—she hates psychology, remember? Sweets said he wasn't the only _psychologist_ involved in Booth and Brennan's case. As season four and five episodes clearly revealed, Sweets has been working with Dr. Gordon Gordon Wyatt. I'm staying as much within canon as possible, so Brennan colluding with Sweets would never happen. What I was attempting to show through the two different scenes is that two independent gambles were taking place at the same time, each in ignorance of the other. Sorry if I failed to make that clear in the story. (See how easy it is to miscommunicate?)

I dropped a couple of hints along the way, and I think Hart Hanson did, too. Brennan is a genius. She operates at times like a grandmaster chess player. That means she's miles ahead of most people and has plotted her next few moves no matter which move her opponent actually makes. She may not know people, but she does know Booth.

For those of you who prefer an angsty, in-canon ending, you've reached it. With Booth doubting himself and those MRIs proving Brennan's fear is correct, this chapter leaves us set up for the nightmare of season six. Consider the story finished with this unraveling of the tragedy we saw in episode 100.

HOWEVER...

For those of you who would find a way to cut yourselves down and come after me with torches and pitchforks if I left you dangling over a pit of angst …. Stay tuned.

~Q~

Additional Note: _(Read only if Brennan's 'gamble' in this chapter didn't make sense to you. Otherwise, you can skip this.)_

Some of you have asked how can Brennan be a grandmaster chess player when it comes to love. Good question. What I suspect is that Brennan has a big heart—hopefully I proved that :)—and that she knows Booth has to love her from his heart if a relationship is going to work. But neither one of them is sure that he does.

The chess playing part is where she considered all of the possible outcomes based on what she saw in Booth's behavior. What she saw was friendship but not romantic love ... until the coma and his behavior changed. What caused that change...? She doesn't know, but she is afraid it is her story.

Given that possibility, she knows that Booth might push for a relationship. (He also might not.) Thus, Booth will make the first move. The master chess player sees both moves as a possibility and tries to plan for both, not knowing which will actually occur. Once he makes his move, then she has to make hers. Assuming he asks for a relationship, Brennan anticipated three possible outcomes, each dependent on the combination of Booth's next move plus hers. (Chess is a very complicated game.)

In order for a romantic relationship to be successful, Booth must truly love her-from his heart-and not as a trick in his brain. There's only one way to ensure that ... do not enter a reltionship if there's any question that Booth is deluded. So, Brennan worked out her strategy to get Booth to confront himself and his feelings. She out-argued him very carefully in my story, (less articulately in episode 100) and resolved to wait for _him_ to figure out where he stands. A chess player anticipates possible moves, but never knows which move the opponent will actually make until it's done. Thus, the gamble is that Brennan doesn't actually know where Booth stands. She does have very serious doubts—she's had them all along, as I hope I've also proved.

_Outcome #1:_ Booth fell in love with her because of the story during his coma, thus his love isn't genuine. Brennan says yes to a relationship, but since Booth doesn't truly love her from his heart, accepting her as she is, she will eventually disappoint him and it will fall apart. This is the risk she can _not_ take. This is why she won't enter a relationship with him with the coma memories unresolved.

_Outcome #2:_ Booth fell in love with her because of the story during his coma, thus his love ins't genuine. Or, Booth really does love her but isn't sure how she feels. Brennan says no to a relationship. Booth will be temporarily angry and disappointed and we already know what will happen: Season six. And I think Brennan knows this also. She sees ahead to this possibility, and knows she's risking this outcome. It will hurt, but at least they can still be partners and friends. This is probably the outcome Hart Hanson gave us.

_Outcome #3:_ Booth has always been in love with her, the coma just intensified his feelings. Whether Brennan says yes or no to a relationship ultimately won't matter because either way, Booth would probably persist now that she's told him she loves him. Since he does love her, from his heart, then we'd end up in an entirely different place. Either way, Brennan's gamble would pay off.

Brennan has done what she can to protect them both from Outcome 1. Outcomes 2 and 3 are still possible. She's waiting for Booth to make his second move from those two options. She's gambled, but not before stacking the odds as much in their favor as she could.

Hopefully that simplified explanation makes sense...?


	9. I Still Have My Heart

Disclaimers still in effect: Not mine.

Author's Note: Still here? You must be the romatics, then. :D

~Q~

**Chapter 9 – I Still Have My Heart**

Leaving her alone over the last few days had been hard, just about impossible, but Booth knew he needed time to retreat, regroup, and figure out how they could recover. She deserved better than to be abandoned just when everything between them was rushing to hell on a greased rail, yet being in her presence had loomed as the most excruciating form of torment.

Feeling every bit like a man who'd lost everything, he'd left the Founding Fathers in a daze on Friday. Cam had wrestled him into a cab and ensured he made it safely to his bed before leaving him with a mixing bowl, a bottle of water, his cell phone, and a note: _Call if you need me. It's going to be OK._

Saturday morning he woke with a steam train thrashing his head, filling what used to be a reasonably sharp intellect with mayhem and noise. He blinked open bleary eyes, recalling first Brennan's luminous eyes and then the reality he'd rather hoped would turn out to be a dream. Submerged in a ragged purposelessness he hadn't felt in years, Booth dragged himself to the Hoover and fell into his chair.

Looking over his desk to the edge where Brennan often perched, he felt again the utter disorientation of not knowing what was real. She'd stripped him raw. She'd been so thorough—if he hadn't witnessed her tears and obvious distress, he might be tempted to accuse Brennan of sadism. For it had been cruel, what she'd done. Could curelty be a form of kindness? He knew that's what she thought she was doing, protecting him from a worse cruelty. That really did not make it hurt any less, however.

It was while he was agonizing over their last conversation—her total annihilation of him—that he turned to an odd form of comfort. He'd pulled out the Gemma Arrington case file. Not being able to trust his direct memories of her, of them, Booth followed his investigator's instinct to look for any evidence for what was true. Something that could be verified independently. He needed something to do and something to believe. Maybe he could find it in the past, in the history he'd recorded with her.

Flipping through endless incident reports, interview logs, evidence forms and crime scene photos, he reached the end and started to close the massive folder. A blank manila envelope at the back of the file teased him, almost seeming to whisper, "open me." He found his hand-written case notes tucked inside and when those small note cards fell onto his desk, something caught his eye. Her name.

Temperance Brennan.

Hardly daring to breathe, he gazed down at his partner's name and felt the world right itself again.

His heart sputtered back into life and he knew what he had to do.

He spent the next two days gathering evidence.

~Q~

Booth found his partner in Limbo standing next to a set of bones, lost in thought. Her face glowed in the soft white light. Despite the shadows under her eyes enhanced by the lights overhead, she still looked achingly beautiful. He shook the thought away and stepped into her work area.

He had a file folder tucked under one arm. "Bones?"

She broke free of her reverie, startled by his presence. "Booth? I didn't expect to see you."

Acknowledging his prolonged absence the first time she'd turned him down, he shrugged and offered a white flag. "We're still partners, right?"

"Yes." She smiled weakly. "Of course."

"What do you think about grabbing lunch?"

The question surprised her. She gazed at him curiously. "Sure. I have to put away these remains. It will take some time."

Booth grabbed the poker chip from his pocket, twirling it around his fingers as he watched her. She moved with practiced efficiency, packing the bones up carefully and sealing the bin.

"Bones…."

She paused from gathering up the paperwork, glancing up again at the hesitant pitch in his voice.

"About what we discussed the other day."

Though she was tempted to stop him because she wasn't sure she was ready for another heart-crushing round with him this soon, Brennan resisted the urge by tensing her jaw and keeping silent. Her eyes told him to continue.

He saw her nervousness and decided it might be a good sign. "I don't believe it."

She nodded slowly, a tendril of hope creeping into her soul. "What part don't you believe?"

He put the poker chip away and faced her with a resolve that was unmistakable. "The part where magnets can tell what I feel about you."

Brennan set down the files she held, very carefully stripped off her latex gloves, and stepped around the end of the exam table. Stepped right next to him and tipped her head slightly to the side. A small grin tugged at one corner of her mouth. "You know that it's magnets?"

He grew visibly more relaxed when she smiled. "I'm not as dumb as I look," he teased.

"I don't think you're dumb, Booth. Dumb is an outdated and inappropriate term for someone who can't speak—"

"Bones," he chuckled. "We're talking about my MRIs. Remember?"

Her smiled softened even further. "I remember everything."

"There's something you may have forgotten," he countered.

Her brow creased as she quickly searched her memory. After coming up empty, she returned her gaze to him and waited, sensing he was going to tell her.

"Tell me, did I get regular MRI scans, or Functional MRIs? And when did I get them, exactly?"

She paused, calculating her reply. "Functional, all three. The first was at Dr. Jersik's order, the day I took you to the hospital. The second was during your coma. The third was two days after you woke up."

He nodded, smiling at her. "And tell me, how do fMRIs work? What do they measure?"

He'd correctly separated functional from standard MRI scanning, and he knew that MRI scans were done with magnets. Brennan realized Booth had done some research over the last day or two. The sense of anticipation grew in her as she answered his query. "They use a pair of powerful magnets to align nuclei in the brain and then excite the nuclei. As the nuclei return to a quiet state, the more highly magnetic deoxygenated blood flow registers differently from oxygenated blood, thus allowing us to visualize neural activity within the brain via the movement of blood to active areas."

"So, it tells you what I'm thinking about?"

She nodded cautiously. "It can be used to identify _types_ of thoughts and emotions, to an extent."

Smiling, nodding to himself, Booth advanced to the next point.

"The first MRI was taken right after you caught me hallucinating. Can you guess what I was thinking about?"

Brennan frowned. "You were worried."

"Right. Not a romantic moment by any stretch of the imagination. So, it's probably not surprising that my scan showed me not thinking about love, or you. I had other things on my mind that day."

"That's … true," she conceded.

Booth leaned in a little, his eyes twinkling. "What do you suppose I was thinking about the next time I got scanned?"

"You were in a coma."

"I was dreaming of you." His pupils had expanded, his interest in her blatant.

"Because I was reading to you."

He took her arm and pulled her closer. "What do you think I was thinking about during my last scan?"

"I don't know exactly, but you were excited, romantically." Warmth swirled around her, seeping in from the man standing so close to her. He was different today, showing her a side she'd never seen before. Flirting, potent.

He was so close she was feeling slightly dizzy. Brennan's heart had begun racing.

"You were standing a couple of feet away, remember?" At her clumsy nod, he smiled with just a hint of predatory joy. "Just before I went into that MRI machine, you squeezed my hand and gave me one of your reassuring smiles. I went in there thinking you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Her eyes widened, but she took it in stride and kept up her end of the argument. "I'd already read my book to you."

Abruptly, he pressed a warm kiss on her, then released her and walked a few paces away. "I need to stand over here."

Brennan gaped at him in bewilderment. "Why?"

"Because, my dear genius, there's a perfectly logical explanation for why you're always accusing me of being not as smart as you."

"Your IQ is lower." It came out in such a matter-of-fact way that she could have been remarking 'your eyes are brown.'

He paused, shook his head, then made an unmistakable gesture. "A man can't think effectively when there's a beautiful woman diverting resources."

Her brow furrowed and her nose wrinkled while she pondered that. Not giving her chance to distract him again, Booth continued quickly. "Those MRIs picked up the two times I was thinking of you … and the one time I wasn't."

She had gone very still, a hope flaring in her eyes that hadn't been there a moment before. "You're using logic on me?"

He laughed tenderly. "I know you, Bones. Since the day I met you, you've never made anything easy for me. You expect me to fight for you, to prove you wrong. Is that what you want?"

Brennan drew in a sharp breath, unnerved and pleased and more than a little astonished that he'd come to that conclusion so quickly. It had only been a few days. She found his eyes. "Yes." _Please_ prove me wrong, she begged silently.

"You are lethal with your logic, I admit. Friday night I felt like you'd ripped my brain right out of my head and showed me it was empty."

He paused, watching remorse flood her features.

"I was ready to give up, I really was. Fighting you on your terms, that's terrifying. You caught me unprepared in a blitz attack and you won that battle."

"You came to me," she pointed out. "You asked me to explain. It wasn't an attack."

Chuckling, he advanced on her again. "It was a full-out offensive operation."

One of the things he admired about Brennan was her tenacity, her intensity, and her unwavering courage. She'd waged a war against him and herself because she thought she had to. Standing her ground as he approached her again, she was looking at him now with a wary hopefulness that told Booth he was finally on the right track.

"Bones, you're the brain person, but I'm the heart person. I've still got my heart, I know what's in there, and that's you. You've been in my heart and on my mind since the day we met."

With a Cheshire grin, he pulled a pale blue index card out of his jacket and handed it to her.

"What is this?" She glanced at it.

"Proof." He watched her brow gather itself into a slightly puzzled frown, so he elaborated. "You were on my mind that day. Notice the date?"

She turned the card over, seeking the date. To her surprise, it was a note card from their interview of Gemma's boyfriend.

"You were in my heart already," he pointed out quietly.

Brennan's eyes fell onto her name, tucked neatly inside a hand-drawn heart laced with flowers. He'd doodled it in the margins of one of the cards, a juvenile moment when his mind had clearly been on her instead of the interview he'd been conducting.

"Booth," she sighed in protest. She'd already debunked his love-at-first-sight hypothesis.

In a flash he was right there silencing her with a deep kiss that robbed her of her breath and any notion of continuing. When he finally drew away, the heat in his gaze nearly burned her. "Shhh. Don't interrupt. You had your say last Friday. Today it's my turn."

~Q~

Author's Note: Booth is about to make his final stand...


	10. Breaking the Rules

Standard Disclaimer: Version 10. I don't own any assets pertaining to Bones. Come to think of it, I don't have any assets at all.

Author's Note: I debated breaking this chapter into two since it's very long, but I just couldn't find anywhere to break it up smoothly.

**Chapter 10 – Breaking the Rules**

In the hours since his discovery Saturday morning, Booth had searched every nook and cranny of his memory, their case files, old receipts and any other physical evidence that would give him the proof he needed to reassure her. There was a list of the accusations she'd made, and Booth had rebuttals written for each one, all handwritten on note cards and arranged in chronological order. Then he memorized their contents.

Leaving nothing to chance, he found her only when he was fully ready to make his stand. You don't try to outwit a genius without coming to the debate fully prepared.

Now that he had her flushed and speechless, Booth launched his counter-offensive.

"The first moment I saw you, Bones, you took my breath away with your smoky eyes and smoky voice. You were so beautiful and so damn sure of yourself. I've never met anyone who could be so charmingly arrogant, who could challenge me in a way that made me keep wanting more. You argued with everything I said, but instead of it making me angry, I just wanted to listen to your voice while you cut me up. Then I would watch your amazing eyes widen a minute later when I threw something unexpected in your path and made you stumble. It got to the point where I would say stuff just to get us started."

"I knew you were doing that, sometimes," she admitted softly. "I liked it, too. Sometimes I would start talking about God or the military on purpose, too, just to set you off."

He laughed. "I suspected as much."

Growing more serious, Booth continued to explain the impact she'd had on him. "I did things with you that I wasn't supposed to do with a consultant. I wasn't supposed to take you into an interview room or let you see, let alone actually talk to, witnesses and suspects. Bones, you think I never broke rules for you? I broke them on the very first day, when I let you sit beside me as I talked to Gemma's boyfriend. You shouldn't have been anywhere near that interview room."

The expression in her eyes shifted, betraying surprise and then a warmth as she recognized the truth in what he was saying. Having always been involved in the investigations with Booth, she'd all but forgotten how unorthodox that first case was, or that she'd had to blackmail him in order to repeat that level of participation in their second case together.

"You and Judge Hasty should not have been in the same place. The only reason I wasn't fired right along with you for that was because you helped me link Gemma's last known location to some of her injuries, proving Judge Hasty had opportunity that night. Another rule I broke with you."

Stepping closer, Booth searched her eyes. "When Caroline told me I had to fire you, I felt sick. I loved working with you. You just amazed the hell out of me. I couldn't predict what you would do or say next, and the way you kept piling on evidence was nothing short of miraculous. You turned my case around in just a couple of days, but more importantly, you made the sun shine for me."

Confusion marred her features. "I can't change the weather, Booth."

Smiling fondly, he corrected her. "Metaphorically."

"Oh."

"In Sweets's office, I lied," Booth confessed. "I told you both that I was at a Gamblers Anonymous meeting the morning I met you but that wasn't true. The truth was, I was up all night in a pool hall."

Horrified, she backed away a step. "You lied to me that night?"

"No!" He reached for her hand and pulled her closer once more. She went to him but the tension in her limbs remained. "I told you the truth. The minute I looked at you in that lecture hall, I wanted to be worthy of you. I started working on my gambling problem the moment you lifted those incredible eyes to mine and grinned that little half-smirk while you told me you were the best in the world."

It was true. She was beautiful in a way that had left him stunned. It wasn't just sexual attraction, he'd known that. It was destiny. He'd even asked her about fate and though Brennan had no way to know it, he had never once asked that question of any other woman. Temperance Brennan had looked into his eyes and his entire world had shifted.

His hand tightened on hers. "I know I said love at first sight doesn't happen when I was talking about Jared and Padme. With you, Bones, something happened to me that day I met you. Maybe it wasn't love, but it was powerful. I knew that you were going to change the course of my life. Just _seeing_ you changed me. You made me believe in fate."

He lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a tender kiss against her fingers while his eyes held hers. "For the first time, I _wanted_ to stop gambling. The first Gamblers Anonymous meeting I ever went to, it was the same night we met. The second meeting I went to was after you left me standing in the rain. I stopped gambling because of you."

Letting go of the hand he'd just kissed, Booth had retrieved the file he'd brought with him and flipped it open. Extracting two sheets of paper, he passed them to her, right into the fingers that still tingled. "More evidence. Hard evidence."

She looked over the papers, feeling her heart dance erratically in her chest. They were sign-in sheets, typically placed at the entrance to meetings and gatherings. This one read 'Gamblers Anonymous, St. Patrick's Church,' the Catholic church she knew Booth sometimes attended on 10th and F Streets because it was only a block away from the Hoover. The first page held the date that matched the day he'd found her lecturing at American University, a Friday. The list of illegible names zipped by unnoted until her eyes stumbled over one signature she knew as well as her own. Seeley Booth. And a box was checked off: "First Time Attending." The second page showed Seeley Booth had arrived more than an hour after the meeting started, on the same night they'd kissed. Stunned speechless, Brennan could only stand in silence while this revelation registered in her consciousness.

"I wanted to impress you," he continued. "I figured you weren't the kind to hang out with 'degenerate gamblers.' Then you told me natural leaders distinguished themselves from others, so I started wearing the flashier ties and socks the next day. Remember?"

He'd pulled out another scrap of paper and handed it to her. It was a receipt from a store in the Crystal City Mall called Hot Topic, detailing the purchase of a "Pin-Up" neck tie, in August 2004. "That's for the tie I showed you at the pool hall."

"You kept this?" she gasped. Who kept receipts for six years, she wondered, other than a man like Booth who tended to keep all sorts of memorabilia.

Another revelation and she hadn't even recovered from the first one. "I thought … I thought that was just you."

"It wasn't me, until you said it and suddenly I wanted to be that man for you."

She shook her head, marveling that small remarks could carry such profound weight. "I didn't expect you to change. It was just a comment. I was nervous and didn't know what to say."

"I wanted to change for you. Bones, you don't realize how amazing you are. I felt completely inadequate standing beside you, like a caveman reaching for Athena. You were so far out of my league."

"How can you say that?" she stammered. "My family is a bunch of criminals who left me. I grew up in foster homes wearing hand-me-down clothes and holes in my shoes. I survived college by eating liters of top ramen. When you met me I was living in a studio apartment and still paying off student loans."

"Yeah, you were a diamond in the rough," he agreed. "I could see it and I wanted you. Within just a couple of days, I knew I needed you."

He gestured to the sign-in sheets still clutched in her hand. "That's why Caroline's order to fire you just about killed me."

Booth found her other hand and waited until she was looking at him. "I never meant to get you drunk. That Tequila was for _me_. I had to fire you and the thought of doing it almost physically hurt. I didn't know how I was going to manage it, so I got myself drunk to work up the nerve. You kept matching me shot-for-shot and I guess I didn't realize how much you'd had. When you suggested sex so fast, I was shocked."

Brennan smirked, knowing it never took much to shock his Catholic sensibilities. But then her face grew serious again. "I wanted you to say no to that."

"I wasn't thinking, Bones, or I would have been a gentleman. At least, I think I would have." He shook his head, wondering if he truly would have reacted differently had he been sober. Temperance was a temptation when her eyes were soft and a teasing smile danced on her lips. She was tempting the hell out of him now, simply standing there with her lips parted and her gaze fixed on him.

His eyes darkened. He brushed his lips whisper close but not quite close enough, teasing her in belated revenge while he whispered, "God, you have no idea how badly I wanted you that night."

Her eyes had fallen closed as he neared, and she let out a disappointed groan when he pulled away without really touching her. "I had no intention of going home with you," she taunted wickedly.

Refusing to take her bait, he tapped her nose and took a half step back from temptation. There was still more territory to cover between them."I was fine with you leaving—I actually respected you for being more clear-headed than I was."

"Then why didn't you say anything?" It was a question that had haunted her all these years. "The next day you acted like nothing happened."

He sighed, knowing he'd really made a mistake with that. "Because I'm a man and sometimes we're idiots. The next day when Caroline told me to hire you back, I was so happy I almost danced into the lab. I was looking forward to seeing you; and you were furious. I couldn't figure out what had happened, why you were so cold. I guess I just didn't realize how it must have looked to you. I'm sorry for that. I should have explained instead of being flippant about it."

For the first time in nearly six years, she squeezed his hand, and he knew she was signaling her forgiveness.

With the question of too much tequila hopefully settled at last, he moved on to the next argument and supporting evidence. "Even though you were mad, and told me you'd never work with me again, it wasn't enough to convince me to go against fate."

Brennan rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Fate is impossible, there are far too many trillions of variables in any single person's ancestry, let along the unimaginable multiplying of those trillions by billions more, for each and every human being that has ever lived. And that doesn't even take into account all of the other events throughout the history of the universe…."

She trailed off when Booth's finger lightly pressed her lips closed.

"My turn, remember?"

She nodded sheepishly.

"Regardless of whether it was fate or infatuation … I wasn't going to let you go. The reason I kept chasing after you is I wanted to see you again." He laughed at the memory. "You made that nearly impossible."

Another dive into the file, and this time he came out with computer printouts detailing … phone calls. "More proof for you that I didn't give up. One hundred seventy three phone calls from my office to yours between August 2004 and July 2005, when you left for Guatemala for two months."

Brennan looked down at the papers he'd given her, a slight blush coloring her cheeks. "Zack hated having to take messages from you. He said it was very unpleasant."

"Yeah, Zack and I got off to a rough start," Booth agreed. "So in order to bypass Zack, I put the order in to Homeland Security to detain you. I know that pissed you off, but it worked."

He passed her another paper, the 'wanted for questioning' order that Special Agent Gibson had acted upon.

The slight blush burned a little brighter. "Actually, I was reluctantly impressed that you went to that much difficulty in order to secure an audience with me. That's why I decided to test you again."

"Test me?" he asked, amused and trying to guess what she'd thrown at him as a test.

"I demanded full participation in the case, remember?"

"Ah, yes. You insisted I break some more rules for you, didn't you, Bones." He leaned in, finishing firmly, but with a smile, "And I did."

"Yes," she acknowledged. "I was certain you would say no and that would be my excuse to get rid of you, so your sudden agreement, along with your invitation that I should spit in your hand, came as a surprise."

Booth grinned. "Scully and Mulder."

"I finally know what that means," she admitted with a bashful smile.

"And do you know how they ended up?" Teasingly he raised a brow and watched as she shook her head.

"The way we're going to," he promised.

"Abducted by aliens?" she asked innocently.

He laughed and corrected her mistake. "Like this." Bending to her, Booth kissed her slowly and deeply. When their pulses had begun racing and showers of sparks raced under their skin, they parted with small gasps of delight.

"You're letting me kiss you, Dr. Brennan."

"You're quite observant, Agent Booth," she replied softly. "Did they teach you that at Quantico?"

"I figured that one out by myself." Another kiss seared them. He pulled away and complained, "God, I can't think when you're this close to me."

Brennan pushed him away lightly, smiling. "Then don't get so close. It's a good thing one of us can be rational."

Hearing her echo what he'd said so bitterly just days ago reminded Booth he still had a few things more to say to her. His argument couldn't end until he'd covered every lapse and accusation she'd noted on Friday.

"On our second case, yet again, I took you places you had no business being. When you went off half-cocked and shot Thomson, I had to break even more rules to keep you out of jail. One of the agreements I had to make was that you were thereafter forbidden to carry a gun while on FBI business. Those times I did give you a gun were more instances of me breaking rules for you."

"Oh," she said quietly. Embarrassment at overlooking something so obvious flooded her. How could she have missed that? Getting the charges of assault dropped most assuredly hadn't been easy for him and she should have recognized that much earlier.

"I found one of your earrings at Dr. LeGiere's house in New Orleans and I grabbed it. I concealed evidence at a crime scene that implicated you for murder, an act that would have ended my career if I was caught. Do you think I would have done that for just anyone?"

She was avoiding his gaze now, so he tipped her chin up and caught her eyes. "I would only risk my career for someone I loved, someone I had absolute faith in. There aren't very many people on that list, Bones. I know I keep saying it but I'm not sure you understand what I feel underneath the words. I love you. I know who you are, everything that makes you unique and a little maddening and so very beautiful inside. You're everything to me."

"Booth…." She wanted to believe it. Brennan was wavering, feeling the pendulum swing her towards a certainty she'd been waiting years to reach. _Keep going,_ she willed him silently. _Push me like I pushed you._

As if he knew what she needed, Booth kept arguing his case. "I stepped over the line with Cam because there was nothing at stake for me there. I realize now that it hurt you, but at the time I … well…." Abruptly he pulled her against him into a strong embrace, nuzzling his face into her neck and inhaling her scent.

She stiffened in confusion even as her body reacted to him just as strongly as it always did.

"You feel that?" he muttered against her ear. He felt her shiver and knew that she did. "God, being next to you was driving me insane. Like we're both feeling right now. I ached for you. You would look at me with those amazing eyes and it was all I could do not to throw you over my shoulder and have my wicked way with you. I needed an outlet."

She lifted her head away and the expression in her eyes was more sympathetic than he could have hoped for. "You did?"

"Yeah. I cared about Cam, she was an old friend who was available and willing. But it was never serious between us."

"Booth," she said slowly. "Hacker … I needed an outlet, too. You were driving me to distraction but your line was still there. He was interested and I thought maybe I could, um, blow off some steam. But we never—I realized I couldn't do it. We didn't have sex. I never even kissed him. He wasn't you."

Growling in a fit of possessiveness, Booth plunged his hands into her hair and pulled her into another kiss. Not satisfied to coax or seduce, this time Booth stormed her mouth with the certainty of a man staking his claim. And just as before she didn't surrender—Brennan was not the kind of woman who would allow herself to be claimed. She was every bit his equal and he adored her for it.

He poured everything into this kiss: all of the fire that burned between them, all the longing for six years, all of his love. Oh yes, there were chemicals. Explosions of testosterone, endorphins, oxytocin, dopamines, all soaking their brains in passion and sending electric sparks racing through every nerve in their bodies.

Deliciously sensitized nerve endings in their mouths relayed the softest brush of her lips, the pressure of his deepening kiss, the sliding of his tongue past her teeth, the taste of her, the warmth of him. Burning nerves recognized his hands pulling her head back, his mouth being dragged from hers as he swept moist kisses down the column of her throat and then returned to kiss her again. The same nerves cried out for continued stimulation when he pulled away and held her steady.

Still breathing heavily, he rested his forehead against hers. "Let's not talk about Cam and Hacker, okay?"

"Okay," she agreed faintly, still recovering from their intense kiss.

"You have been my everything, right from the beginning."

Drawing back, Brennan reached for him in wonder, her fingers trailing lightly over his upper ocular orbit, slipping around and down to trace the line of his zygomatic. "You love me," she murmured. "You really do."

"Do you need more evidence," he asked tenderly. He gestured towards the file folder that still contained more than an inch of papers spilling out. "I brought a whole stack of it."

"You're proving it to me?" Tears were in her eyes again, along with the brightest ray of hope he'd ever seen.

"I'll spend the rest of our days providing it to you, one day at a time. I told you a few months ago, I would do anything for you. It's true. I would kill for you, and I have. I've killed and threatened to kill. I would die for you: I almost did twice and I would do it again."

A chill ran through her at the memory of him dying in her arms. She shut her eyes for a moment, trying to push that bloody memory away. Mercifully, something else he'd just admitted to tickled her curiosity and helped her focus on something less terrifying. "Who did you threaten?"

"Roberto Ortiz, the leader of the Mara Muerte gang."

Confusion pinched her brows as she tried to recall what would have prompted Booth to threaten that particular man. He was an arrogant man who'd ordered the beating of a person of interest and showed no fear of the FBI. Furiously recalling her own mistreatment at the hands of similar men, Brennan had angrily provoked Ortiz and beaten him in an altercation in the FBI corridors. Booth had simply watched, choosing not to intervene.

"Why?" she finally asked, and even as she spoke she sensed the answer was going to come as a shock.

"After you beat him up, Ortiz put out a hit on you."

There it was, the shock she somehow should have expected all those years ago. "You never told me."

"I took care of it. That's why I was late to that funeral." He shifted closer, as if to protect her still. "That was what I thought was more important than a funeral—keeping you safe. That was how many months into our partnership?"

It took only a few seconds for her to calculate. "Five."

"So let's summarize here, Bones. The day we met, I stopped gambling for you. In the first year of our partnership, I was ready to kill for you, I nearly died for you, and I risked my career for you. I did all that even though I thought you didn't love me and you never would. What does that evidence tell you?"

"You drew a line, Booth. You said we couldn't. Why?" It was the last question she needed an answer to.

"I drew that line for me," he explained gently. "I kept falling deeper and deeper into you and what I was feeling for you was dangerous. I knew that. Partners can't get too close—it messes with judgment. I hoped just saying it would hold me back. I know, in hindsight, that it was wishful thinking to just say 'there's a line' and somehow that would put some distance between us. We've always been too close for that, haven't we."

Brennan's eyes never strayed from his. She nodded slowly, the gears already turning while she processed everything he'd told her. Every feeling she'd ever harbored for him was beautifully painted on the canvas of her face. "I've always loved you, Booth."

"I know." He kissed her gently on the forehead and dared to hope he'd convinced her. "I've always loved you."

"I know…" she trailed off, dazed and delighted. And unspeakably grateful that he didn't give up. "It **_is_** real. You made sure I know it's real."

"Just so you realize, you lost this argument," he teased.

She shook her head, knowing he might not quite understand. In losing, she had won. "I wanted you to win. I wanted you to prove me wrong. I'm so relieved that you did. I've never been so happy to be wrong."

"So, now that we each know where the other is standing, what should we do about it, Bones?"

After giving it a moment of thought, she announced, "I think we should go to lunch."

"Wha— Now?!" Booth's disappointment was almost comical.

"Yes, now."

Brennan was moving quickly. In a flash she'd moved away from him, the files she'd been working on earlier already tucked back into the storage bin of her Civil War era Jane Doe. She had the bin replaced while Booth was still trying to figure his mysterious partner out.

"You just want to go to the Diner? That's it?"

"I never said anything about the Diner." Brennan shucked off her lab coat and tossed it over her arm. Next she briskly picked up the evidence Booth had given her, tucked it back into his folder and handed it to him. "You ready?"

"Then … where are we going?" He didn't move, just stood at the base of the stairs leading back to the lab and gaped at her as she started upstairs without him.

Sensing he hadn't followed, she stopped and looked down at him quizzically. "To my place, as it's the closest. I need to stop by my office quick on the way out."

"Your place," he echoed blankly, realizing she was several steps ahead of him once again, both literally and figuratively.

"Yes. We'll be needing privacy. I believe Angela calls it a 'nooner.'"

He found himself laughing. Yep, completely unpredictable. Sprinting up the steps after her, Booth caught her arm once more. "No, no, no."

"No?" She stood one step higher and tipped her head curiously.

"No." Firmly, he took the last step and remained her equal. "You just got done putting me through hell proving myself to you. No way am I letting you rush us through the best part with a quickie nooner."

"A quickie is a hurried sexual encounter," she defined.

"Yeah, Bones."

"I thought you preferred to make love."

Now he was confused again. "Yeah, which rules out a nooner."

"No," she corrected. "A nooner is any activity that takes place at lunch time."

Booth shook his head in exasperation. "You just said we'd need privacy."

"Yes. We need privacy to discuss how we're going to proceed, what to tell the FBI, and so forth. I think we should undertake that discussion immediately."

"Um, that's not what people do during nooners."

"Yes it is, Booth. I looked it up in the dictionary when Angela said she was meeting Hogins at the Egyptian place for a nooner. There's an Egyptian restaurant on D Street. I hardly think they'd be engaging in intercourse in a public restaurant, thus the first definition must be what Angela meant…."

The door at the top of the stairs clanged shut, leaving Limbo in restful silence once more.

~Q~

Author's Note: Yes, that little dig was intentional, lol. Hart Hanson gave us the equivalent of a 'quickie' when he finally put B&B together without any real conversation or resolution between them. I know he was going for the surprise cliff-hanger, but I think we all deserved that six-year romantic arc to end a lot more romantically than it did.

There is one more short chapter to go after this.

Thank you to the people reading this silently. Thank you to everyone who reviewed, your words of encouragement have made this story a much more interactive experience than I expected. And a special thank you to those reviewers who left me critical reviews, pointing out flaws or questions. I took your words seriously and at times I did use them to improve my writing. You made a positive impact, so thank you for not holding back. :)


	11. Tying Up Loose Ends

Disclaimer: For the last time (literally), they don't belong to me.

Author's Note: This is the final chapter of this story.

**Chapter 11 – Tying Up Loose Ends**

"Sweets! Come on, we're going for coffee."

Only one person would make such an imperious demand and expect it to be followed immediately. Dr. Lance Sweets masked the sudden unease he felt seeing that Booth had finally come to confront him. "Agent Booth, I'm kind of in the middle of something."

Being invited outside the Hoover was a signal for off-the-record; or possibly the ruse that would lead to his untimely disappearance. Sweets cautiously watched Booth enter his office, searching for the signal that would tell him to run for his life.

But Booth wasn't angry, exactly. There was a definite intensity and the sense of carefully controlled energy in the way he moved, yet anger was not there. He appeared quite neutral, in fact. His game face firmly in place, the only clue to what Booth had in mind came from a deep question hidden in his eyes. "Whatever it is, it can wait. Come on, up! Chop-chop!"

Sweets stood, steadying his nerves with a carefully released exhalation. He seriously considered pulling his last will and testament out of the bottom desk drawer and leaving it where it could easily be found because he knew Booth could make sure his body wasn't found at all.

They left the Hoover together, each immersed in contemplative thought. Sweets was seeing his life flash before his eyes; Booth was working out just how he was going to get what he'd come for. As they entered the Royal Diner, Sweets exhaled again in relief. Booth wouldn't shoot him in public.

"So I have a question for you," Agent Booth announced when they were both seated at the table he usually shared with Dr. Brennan.

"Shoot," Sweets invited, then winced when he heard his own Freudian slip. _Crap, wrong thing to say. Way wrong. Don't give him any ideas._ He shook his head quickly. "Uh, what's the question?"

Booth regarded the younger man curiously. "You okay, kid. You look a little queasy."

"Must be something I ate," Sweets muttered. _Or stark, raving terror,_ his brain taunted right back.

"Vera might have something for that if you ask her."

Glancing at the aging waitress who had served Booth and Brennan for years, Sweets couldn't help reaching out for salvation. Or at least a solid witness who could testify she'd last seen him alive in the company of Special Agent Seeley Booth.

"Yeah, maybe some Tums." _Xanex? Valium?_

Booth flagged Vera over and requested coffee and Tums for Sweets, simply coffee for himself. When she'd departed, he got to the point. "What I need to know is, what were you doing last week. That thing about breaking the stalemate."

"Uh, yeah, maybe I was a little bit impulsive there. You know, caught up in the moment."

Booth sat back, his laser gaze pinning Sweets to the back of his vinyl and steel diner chair. "Cut the crap, kid. How did you see that playing out?"

"Um," Sweets found himself stalling, sweat breaking out on his brow. He wondered if Booth would allow him one of those lifeline calls like they did on that millionaire game show. He should have pushed for going to Gordon Wyatt's restaurant, Sweets suddenly realized with regret. Having the esteemed former Doctor—now Chef—Gordon Wyatt on hand would have given him much-needed back up. It was half Wyatt's fault he was in this plight to begin with. Plus it didn't hurt that Wyatt had six inches and 100 pounds on Booth.

"I don't know," he finally stammered. "Not good…?"

The older man shook his head firmly. "Not good the first time. A complete disaster the second time."

And there it was, the first real hint of something other than casual conversation between friends. Darkness tinged Booth's blunt statement, yet his outward demeanor remained calm. Sinking back, waiting for what came next, Sweets pulled out every psychological trick he knew to see where this was going. Booth was guarding his intentions very closely, casting Sweets back and forth between hope and terror.

Vera interrupted the tense moment by dropping off two cups of coffee and a rattling bottle of Tums.

Booth's hard glare made Sweets swallow down another gulp of fear under the guise of taking the antacids. He nearly choked before he remembered he was supposed to chew them first.

"Is that what you wanted," Booth asked dangerously. "For us to end badly?"

"No!" Sweets squealed. "No. Not at all. I swear!"

"What game are you playing?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?"

Booth leaned over the table, his menace unmistakable. "I need to know what you were planning to do if your comment to me resulted in our partnership ending."

Eyes wide, the baby duck shook his head. "It wouldn't. Nothing would break up your professional partnership, Agent Booth. Any idiot with a degree in psychology can see that."

"Really…." Sounding skeptical, Booth dumped two packets of sugar into his coffee and stirred it absently as he drew out the non-agreement. "You see, I can think of something that would."

Grabbing his cup with both hands and lifting it as a child would, Sweets clung to its reassuring warmth to steady his hands and nerves. He was starting to think that maybe Agent Booth wasn't planning to kill him, that he wanted something else instead. Information. Reassurance? Yes, reassurance!

"You two are solid," Sweets insisted. "The most solid team in the Bureau."

He took a sip of his coffee, then set the cup down with a slight clatter. "Then why would you want to break us up, huh Sweets?"

"What? No! I'm not trying to break you up! Why would you say that?"

Booth leaned in, eyes hard and sharp. "Because that's what happens when partners get romantically involved."

_Whoa._

Sweets gulped again, seeing the rug had been pulled out from under him so fast he was flat on his back. "Uh…" His mind went completely blank.

What do I say? Sweets wondered frantically? What answer is not going to get me killed? Suddenly he latched onto what Booth had said earlier. "Wait, I thought you said it was a disaster."

"There's more than one kind of disaster," Booth remarked coolly. "What I need to know, is what kind of disaster **_you_** were angling for? The kind where I make a move, she turns me down, and we both trudge miserably along day after day until we can't stand the sight of each other, and we split up? Or the kind where she says yes and the FBI breaks up our partnership because the rules are, no romantic encounters between partners."

Sweets nearly collapsed in relief. "You're worried you're going to lose the working relationship?"

"The way I see it, either way I'd lose my professional partnership with Bones. Right?"

_Oh, thank God! I can manage this,_ Sweets reassured himself. Gathering up every scrap of dignity a 24 year old man could muster, he lifted his gaze and attempted to salvage his questionable reputation as a man with deep psychological insights. "Agent Booth, I wouldn't have suggested you make a move if I didn't have official approval already secured."

Booth stared at him with all the intensity of a master interrogator. Sweets forced himself to meet the assessing stare head on, knowing his life depended on being believed.

"Whose approval?" Booth demanded.

"Assistant Director Hacker."

"Hacker approved it?" His surprise was complete, along with a sudden expression of primal male victory. The mood at their little table lightened considerably.

"He said he was only surprised it took this long."

"Ha!" Booth sat back, clearly amused with this turn of events. "So it's okay?"

"If you're asking what the FBI's position is in regard to you and Dr. Brennan becoming involved romantically, they will officially be looking the other way—as long as you comport yourselves as professionals and your solve rate continues as it currently stands."

Nodding, the agent glanced out the window, then around the Diner with a sniper's attention to environment. He returned his sharp gaze to the young psychologist and instructed, "This conversation is off the record. It'll be easier for them to keep looking the other way if there's no official record."

"Of course," Sweets agreed hastily.

Booth tossed back a couple of swallows of his coffee, leaving his cup nearly empty. "Thanks, Sweets. You've been a great help."

"So … you're not going to kill me?" He couldn't quite contain the needy hope that infused his query.

"Of course not. Bones wouldn't like it." Booth slapped Sweets on the arm and strode off to the door. "See ya around, Sweets. Oh, one more thing…."

Coming back, Booth leaned down and caught Sweets by the eyes. "Don't think I don't know what you were doing. You are very lucky that it turned out okay between us. There will be no more counseling sessions. What goes on between Bones and me is ours. You understand?"

"Yes," Sweets confirmed without any hesitation, glad to find himself still breathing and all his limbs still whole. He sagged back against his seat once Booth departed the Diner, exhausted.

Vera came back for a refill, remarking, "He looks happy. Something finally happen with that partner of his?"

Mouth falling open in shock, Sweets gaped at her. "How did you know?!"

She laughed. "I've seen those two in here just about every day for the past four years. Even a blind donkey could see they're head over heels for each other. But I never saw him look this happy."

"He didn't look happy, he looked like he was ready to kill me!" Sweets exclaimed.

Ruffling his hair like a fond mother, Vera clucked her tongue. "Aw, he's just protecting what's important. The happiness was right there in his eyes. Besides, I'll let you in on a little secret."

Hardly daring to ask, Sweets raised his hands in a shrug and waited.

She bent down to whisper her secret. "I saw them in here two hours ago, kissing and nuzzling like two teenagers who know mom and dad are in the next room. Now, don't you tell anyone."

Laughing, Vera whisked away her coffee pot and resumed taking care of her customers.

~Q~

**Epilogue**

"Dr. Saroyan, I'm heading out for the evening."

Given the relatively early hour, the speaker was quite unexpected. Cam looked from the clock on her computer monitor that declared 17:55 to the woman standing just inside the doorway to the autopsy suite.

"Dr. Brennan. This is a bit out of the ordinary." Cam regarded the anthropologist warmly, noting the remarkable transformation that had taken place just since lunchtime yesterday.

"I'm meeting Booth for dinner," she admitted, unable to stop an elated smile from breaking through.

"You've worked it out, I see." Cam's happiness at this development was all the more genuine given how little hope she'd detected a scant few days ago.

She nodded, her effusive delight seeming to expand and fill the room. "Yes."

"I'm truly happy for you both."

"Thank you." She turned as if to leave, but then paused. Brennan hesitated in the doorway for several seconds before turning back.

"Cam … thank you."

She had suddenly grown so serious that Cam knew this wasn't a casual thanks. Brennan clearly meant something more. Curious, Cam asked, "For what?"

Brennan regarded her former rival gravely, knowing that many layers of communication were passing between them. "You've been good to him, you've helped him. You've helped me, too, I suspect. I won't forget it. I am honored to call you a friend."

"You're a good friend also, Temperance. And I am truly, deeply gratified to see how this has turned out."

Though it had been difficult between them at first, an understanding had been reached. Somehow over the years their goals had aligned until they were facing the same direction, working together for the same cause. Both women had settled into roles of complementary dual leadership in the laboratory, and each had found her place in Booth's life. Brennan knew that she and Cam had become good and loyal friends, their rapport understated but strong just the same. They both just knew it, and somehow that felt just right.

"Now, I think Booth has waited for you long enough." Cam waved her hand in dismissal. "Off you go."

Brennan turned again, her parting words drifting back on a wave of gentle laughter. "I've been waiting just as long for him."

~Q~

Author's Note: I really enjoyed writing this last chapter, with its shades of Poe's, 'Tell Tale Heart.'

Hopefully you all enjoyed reading this (except for those angst-filled middle chapters) as much as I did writing it. Once I unraveled the string, I felt like I finally understood what was going on during seasons five and six. Though I still think they could have resolved it much better than the way it finally did end, this story is my act of forgiveness towards Hart Hanson and Stephen Nathan.

"True forgiveness is when you can say, "Thank you for that experience."  
-Oprah Winfrey

Thank you to **_all_** of my readers, reviewers and lurkers alike, for spending your valuable time on me.


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